Software container registry container image deployment

ABSTRACT

A software image associated with a first customer of a computing resource service provider and criteria for identifying an event is received, the software image comprising a set of layers. The set of layers is stored in a first data store to form a stored set of layers, the first data store being physically located in a first region. The set of layers is copied to a second data store to form a copied set of layers, the second data store being physically located in a second region different from the first region. The copied set of layers is launched as a container executing in an instance that is physically located in the second region, and, as a result of identifying an occurrence of the event, the container is caused to be unavailable to an entity associated with the instance.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This application incorporates by reference for all purposes the fulldisclosure of co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/975,631,filed concurrently herewith, entitled “SOFTWARE CONTAINER REGISTRYSERVICE” and co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/975,637,filed concurrently herewith, entitled “SOFTWARE CONTAINER REGISTRYINSPECTION”.

BACKGROUND

Software containers can allow multiple applications to quickly launchand run within the respective user spaces without overhead associatedwith starting and maintaining separate virtual machines. Companies andindividuals have turned to these software containers for automatedapplication deployment on virtual machine instances being remotelyhosted by distributed computing systems of computing resource serviceproviders. However, revision control and source file management forcontainerized software images is limited, does not guard againstsecurity vulnerabilities, and does not make efficient use of storageresources.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Various embodiments in accordance with the present disclosure will bedescribed with reference to the drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a container registry in accordance withan embodiment;

FIG. 2 illustrates an example of a software container registry serviceenvironment in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 3 illustrates an example of garbage collection of container imagesin accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 4 illustrates an example of vulnerability sweeps of containerimages in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 5 illustrates an example of security scans of container images inaccordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 6 illustrates an example of a container registry proxy forcontainer images in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 7 illustrates an example of a container marketplace for containerimages in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 8 illustrates an example of container marketplace for time-basedcontainer images in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 9 illustrates an example of token-based authentication forcontainer images in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 10 illustrates an example of predictive container registry cachingin accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 11 illustrates an example of an automatic build and deploymentservice in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 12 illustrates an example of an entity relationship diagram of acontainer registry in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 13 is a block diagram that illustrates an example of storing acontainer image in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 14 is a block diagram that illustrates an example of launching acontainer image stored in a repository in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 15 is a flowchart that illustrates an example of accessing arepository in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 16 is a block diagram that illustrates an example of retrieving animage from a repository in accordance with an embodiment; and

FIG. 17 illustrates an environment in which various embodiments can beimplemented.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In one example, a system including a container registry comprising oneor more repositories may receive a first application programminginterface request to store a container image in a repository of acustomer of a computing resource service provider. In response toreceiving the first request, the system may determine a set of containerimage layers that comprise the container image specified by the firstrequest. The system may also obtain or generate a manifest that containsmetadata about the set of container image layers corresponding to thespecified container image. Individual container image layers maycomprise a set of files of the container image. The system may determinea subset of the set of container image layers that have not yet beenstored in the repository of the customer, and store the manifest and thesubset in the repository as a stored container image.

Subsequently, the system may receive a second application programminginterface request to launch the stored container image in a containerinstance of the customer as a running software container. In response toreceiving the second request, the system may obtain the manifestcorresponding to stored container image, and retrieve the set of filesfor the stored container image as indicated by the manifest. As a resultof retrieving the set of files of the layers comprising the containerimage, the system may cause the container image to be launched as therunning software container in the container instance of the customer.

In another example, the system further comprises a front-end servicethat provides a plurality of application programming interfaces forperforming operations with the container registry. In this example, thecustomer may make, using a computing device, a request, using anapplication programming interface provided by the front-end service, tostore the specified container image in the container registry. Inresponse to the customer making the request, the system may make theaforementioned first programming interface request to the containerregistry, thereby causing the container image to be stored in thecontainer registry. Also in this example, the customer may make, usingthe computing device, another request, using an application programminginterface provided by the front-end service, a request to launch thespecified container image in a container instance of the customer. Inresponse to the customer making the other request, the system may makethe aforementioned second programming interface request to the containerregistry, thereby causing the specified container image to be launchedin the container instance.

In the preceding and following description, various techniques aredescribed. For purposes of explanation, specific configurations anddetails are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding ofpossible ways of implementing the techniques. However, it will also beapparent that the techniques described may be practiced in differentconfigurations without the specific details. Furthermore, well-knownfeatures may be omitted or simplified to avoid obscuring the techniquesbeing described.

Techniques described and suggested in the present disclosure improve thefield of computing, specifically the field of revision control systems,by providing a service for revision control of container imagesconfigured to run as software containers. Additionally, techniquesdescribed and suggested in the present disclosure improve the efficiencyof computing systems by storing container images as layers, which allowsefficient use of storage resources. Moreover, techniques described andsuggested in the present disclosure are necessarily rooted in computertechnology in order to overcome problems specifically arising withsoftware containers by providing tools for scanning for securityvulnerabilities and licensing compliance issues, and tools for autodeployment of software.

FIG. 1 illustrates an aspect of an environment 100 in which anembodiment may be practiced. As illustrated in FIG. 1, the environment100 may include a customer 166 who has built a container image 152configured to run in a container instance 104. The customer 166 mayupload the container image 152 to a container registry 102 through acontainer registry front-end service 114. From the container registry102, the container image 152 may be served to the container instance 104through the container registry front-end service 114 to be launched. Insome examples, a “container image” may refer to metadata and one or morecomputer files corresponding to contents and/or structure of one or moresoftware applications configured to execute in a software container. Insome cases, the container image 152 may comprise “layers” thatcorrespond to steps in the build process of the container image 152. Thecontainer image 152 may be new software (e.g., a first version) or maybe an update to one or more components of the previous version of thecontainer image 152. The customer 166 may be a customer of a computingresource service provider that is hosting container instances for thecustomer 166. The customer 166 may wish to store the container image 152in a repository for various reasons. For example, the customer 166 maywish to have revision control over the container image 152 and be ableto roll back to previous versions or install previous versions of thecontainer image 152. As another example, the customer 166 may be asoftware vendor and wish to upload the container image to apublicly-accessible repository in order to make it accessible to otherusers for download and/or purchase.

The container image 152 may be one or more software applicationscorresponding to a software package. The container image 152, as isfurther described below, may be uploaded and stored as a set of layers.That is, each layer of the container image 152 may correspond to a stepin the build process of the container image 152 as a whole. One or morebase layers of the container image 152 may comprise the operating systemused to execute other software applications. If the container image 152is an update to a container image already stored in the containerregistry 102, not all layers of the container image 152 need to beuploaded to the container registry; that is, only the layers of thecontainer image 152 may need to be uploaded, and, in this way, containerregistry 102 storage is optimized and bandwidth needed for uploadingcontainer images may be reduced.

The primary responsibility of the container registry front-end service114 may be to provide external application programming interfaces forcustomers of the computing resource service provider to be able tomanage images stored in their container registry (e.g., the containerregistry 102). Examples of application programming interfaces providedby the container registry front-end service 114 may include:

Queries Registry Metadata API Description Service GetAuthorizationToken() Upon confirmation that the requesting entity is authorized, obtains asecurity token usable to obtain access to a specified registryUpdateRegistry( ) Modifies metadata about a specified registryCreateRegistry( ) Creates a registry for the Yes requesting entityDeleteRegistry( ) Deletes a specified registry Yes of the requestingentity DescribeRegistries( ) Returns metadata about a Yes specifiedregistry ListImages( ) Returns a list of container Yes images stored ina specified registry DescribeImages( ) Returns metadata about a Yesspecified image UpdateImage( ) Uploads one or more updated Yes imagelayers for a specified image DeleteImage( ) Deletes a specified imageYes GetLayerDownloadUrl( ) Returns the location from where a layer canbe downloaded from the repository GetLayerUploadUrl( ) Returns thelocation to where a layer can be uploaded to the repository ListTags( )Returns a list of tags for images Yes in the repository; tags being usedto associate container images with each other as a group (e.g., “version1,” “version 2,” etc.) SearchRepositories( ) Allows searching ofrepositories Yes for files or container images

The container registry 102 may be a comprised of one or morerepositories configured to store files and/or directories correspondingto container images, such as the container image 152, and metadata forthe files and/or directories. Individual repositories 188 may beassigned to customers of the computing resource service provider.Customers may have one or more repositories 188 as needed. For example,a customer may have a private repository to which the customer uploadscontainer images under development, but not yet ready for release, and apublic repository to upload container images that may be purchasedand/or downloaded for installation by various users or other customersof the computing resource service provider. The repositories may beindividual databases or may be stored in one or more data stores of adata storage service of the computing resource service provider. Eachrepository may have various associated roles and policies specifyingaccess types and restricting access to the repository to entitiesauthorized by the customer to access the repository.

In some examples, a “container instance” (also referred to as “softwarecontainer instance”) may refer to a computer system instance (virtual ornon-virtual, such as a physical computer system running an operatingsystem) that is configured to launch and run software containers. Thecontainer instance 104 may be configured to run software containers inaccordance with the task definition file provided by a customer of thecomputing resource service provider. One or more container instances maycomprise a cluster. In some examples, “cluster” may refer to a set ofone or more container instances that have been registered to (i.e., asbeing associated with) the cluster. Thus, the container instance 104 maybe one of many different container instances registered to a particularcluster.

A “software container” (also referred to as a “container” for short) maybe an isolated user space instance. That is, a software container may bea lightweight virtualization instance running under a computer systeminstance that includes programs, data, and system libraries. When thesoftware container is run, the running program (i.e., the process) isisolated from other processes running in the same computer systeminstance. Thus, multiple software containers may each run on anoperating system (e.g., using memory, CPU, and storage allocated by theoperating system) of the container instance 104 and execute in isolationfrom each other (e.g., each container may have an isolated view of thefile system of the operating system). Each of the containers may haveits own namespace, and applications running within the containers may beisolated by only having access to resources available to the containernamespace. In this manner, containers may be an effective way to run oneor more single applications within their own namespace without overheadassociated with starting and maintaining virtual machines for runningseparate user space instances. Examples of systems for managing softwarecontainers include the Docker container engine and the CoreOS Rocketcontainer engine. Software containers may be launched to have onlyspecified resources from resources allocated to the container instance104; that is, a task definition may specify that a software containeronly utilize a specified amount of memory and/or a specified amount ofprocessing power.

FIG. 2 illustrates an aspect of an environment 200 in which anembodiment may be practiced. As illustrated in FIG. 2, the environment200 may include a container registry 202 comprising a container registryfront-end service 214, a registry metadata service 222, and a storageservice. The registry metadata service 222 may be a structured (i.e.,non-relational, non-SQL, or not-only SQL) data storage service thathosts a scalable, distributed database for storing metadata about thecontainer images and/or container image layers. That is, in order tosupport increasing amounts of metadata, the database of the registrymetadata service 222 may be distributed across a fleet of hosts, suchthat a portion of data may be stored on one host and another portion ofdata may be stored on another host such that there may be routing todetermine which host or hosts contain the metadata needed to beretrieved.

Although relational data storage may be used for the metadata storage,advantages presented by separating metadata storage from the storageservice 290 and utilizing a structured storage for the registry metadataservice 222 includes design simplicity, flexibility, horizontalscalability (i.e., the ability to add more compute nodes to a clusterhosting the database in order to accommodate increasing database sizewhile maintaining performance objectives), and improved performance.Metadata stored by the registry metadata service 222 may include ahistorical record of changes in the repository and version trackinginformation, and manifests for container images stored in the storageservice 290. A manifest may comprise metadata such as an identity of thecontainer image that corresponds to the manifest, and, for each layerlisted in the manifest, a content-addressable identifier that uniquelycorresponds to a respective layer and a checksum for verifying theintegrity of the content of the layer. In some examples, a “containerimage” may be a virtual file system comprising a collection of dataobjects that make up the software application. The manifest may be afile written in any suitable format, such as Extensible Markup Language(“XML”) or JavaScript Object Notation (JSON).

The storage service 290 may be a storage location configured to storeapplication repositories and container image layers. In some examples,an “application repository” may refer to a data structure for versioningand storing metadata for a set of files and/or directories of a softwareapplication. In an embodiment, the registry metadata service 222 is astructured data storage in a database, and the storage service 290simply stores data (e.g., binary large objects, files, data of varyingtypes and sizes, etc.) as data objects. In this embodiment, the registrymetadata service 222 stores information about which data object is inwhich repository of which registry. In this manner, the containerregistry front-end service 214 may query the registry metadata service222 for the location of a data object in the storage service 290, and,as a result of receiving the location, may retrieve the data objectcorresponding to the location from the storage service 290.

Furthermore, in embodiments the registry metadata service 222 mayprovide support for storing container images and layers in multiplestorage locations. For example, a container image and/or software layermay be stored on multiple servers (e.g., at the request of a customer,automatically to various servers of a content delivery network, etc.) ofthe storage service 290 (which may be located in different geographicregions) in order to provide optimal throughput for distributing thecontainer image and/or software layer to customers of the computingresource service provider. The metadata within the registry metadataservice 222 for the container image and/or software layer may be updatedto reflect all of the storage locations (e.g., uniform resource names)for the container image and/or software layer at the multiple serverswhere the container image and/or software layer is stored. In thismanner, separation of the metadata from the storage service 290 to theregistry metadata service 222 provides the flexibility to query for dataabout container images and software layers in various ways. Upon arequest to retrieve/download a container image, the container registryfront-end service 214 may query the registry metadata service 222 toobtain a list of storage locations for the container image, make adetermination of which storage location of the list from which toretrieve the container image to provide optimal efficiency for thecustomer and/or the computing resource service provider, and provide thecontainer image to the customer and/or customer container instances fromthe determined location.

A container image may be stored as a container image layer. Each timethe container image is updated, a new container image layer may becreated. Each container image layer may only contain data objects thathave changed since the previous version of the container image.Accordingly, a layer may include a manifest that links to data objectswithin previous layers that have not changed such that a particularversion of a container image may be launched from a layer which itselfdoes not include all data objects of the container image.

The system of the present disclosure may coexist with a softwarecontainer service such as the software container service described inU.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/538,663, filed Nov. 11, 2014,entitled “SYSTEM FOR MANAGING AND SCHEDULING CONTAINERS,” incorporatedby reference herein. In the environment 200 of FIG. 2 of the presentdisclosure, a container instance 204 may be launched and may be hostingone or more software containers in a distributed computing environmentof a computing resource service provider. A service provided by acomputing resource service provider may be one of one or more serviceconfigured to provide access to resources of a computer system includingdata processing, data storage, applications, interfaces, permissions,security policies, encryption, and/or other such services. A containerservice may be provided as a service to users of a computing resourceservice provider by, for example, providing an interface to thecontainer instance 204.

In some embodiments, the services provided by a computing resourceservice provider include one or more interfaces that enable the customerto submit requests via, for example, appropriately-configuredapplication programming interface calls to the various services. Inaddition, each of the services may include one or more serviceinterfaces that enable the services to access each other (e.g., toenable a virtual computer system of the virtual computer system serviceto store data in or retrieve data from an on-demand data storage serviceand/or access one or more block-level data storage devices provided by ablock-lever data storage service). Each of the service interfaces mayalso provide secured and/or protected access to each other viaencryption keys and/or other such secured and/or protected accessmethods, thereby enabling secure and/or protected access between them.Collections of services operating in concert as a distributed computersystem may have a single front-end interface and/or multiple interfacesbetween the elements of the distributed computer system.

Within the container instance 204, a software application known as anagent 206 may be running. The agent 206 may be configured to managecontainers and communicate with a container engine 208. The agent 206may receive commands for managing software containers from a containerscheduler or other communications service. The container engine 208 mayalso include a container service interface, such as a command lineinterface, through which a customer of the computing resource serviceprovider or other authorized entity may communicate with the containerengine 208. The container instance 204 may also include an instanceservice interface 212 (e.g., a command line interface) through which thecustomer or other authorized entity may communicate to the containerregistry front-end service 214. In some embodiments, the containerengine 208 and/or the instance service interface 212 are executed on alocal computer system by the customer, rather than within the containerinstance 204.

As noted, the container engine 208 may be configured to communicate withthe container registry proxy 262. The container registry proxy 262 maybe responsible for communicating with the container registry front-endservice 214 to store container images in the and repositories of thestorage service 290 and serve container images from the storage service290 to container instances of customers, such as the container instance204, through a container service of a computing resource serviceprovider, such as the container service described in U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 14/538,663, incorporated by reference herein. Thecontainer service may be a service comprising a collection of computerresources provided to a customer by a computing resource serviceprovider and configured to instantiate containers on behalf of acustomer. The customer may interact with the container service toprovision, place and operate software containers that are instantiatedon virtual or non-virtual computer devices hosted and operated by thecomputing resource service provider. The software containers may be usedfor various purposes, such as to support a website or databaseapplications, to execute business or electronic commerce applications,or, generally, to serve as compute power for the customer.

The container registry proxy 262 may provide private access controlthrough the authentication service 216. Application programminginterface calls made to the container registry proxy 262 may be recordedthrough the transaction logging service 218. However, in someembodiments, the container registry proxy 262 is not limited to use witha container service, but may be configured to be compatible with variouscontainerization platforms (e.g., Docker, Rocket, etc.). Each customerrunning container instances hosted by the computing resource serviceprovider may be allocated one or more repositories in the containerregistry proxy 262 for storing container images. The customer may causeone or more repositories to be created, deleted, or modified by invokingthe proper application programming interfaces of the container registryfront-end service 214.

The container registry proxy 262 may function at least in part as aproxy for communication between the container engine 208 and theapplication programming interfaces (APIs) of the container registryfront-end service 214. The container registry front-end service 214 maybe a set of APIs and endpoints that are made accessible to customers ofthe computing resource service provider. The customers may call the APIsand endpoints through the instance service interface 212 or through thecontainer registry proxy 262. The container registry front-end service214 may be similar to the container registry front-end service 114 ofFIG. 1.

The container registry front-end service 214 may be configured toutilize one or more other services of the computing resource serviceprovider, such as an authentication service 216, a transaction loggingservice 218, and/or the key management service 220. The containerregistry front-end service 214 may be further configured to use aregistry metadata service 222.

The registry metadata service 222 may be configured to store informationabout data objects in a metadata store 124. The registry metadataservice may comprise one or more data stores separate from the datastores of the container registry. The primary responsibility of theregistry metadata service 222 may be to provide fast access to layer andtag information of software containers. The registry metadata service222 may store container image manifests, tag information, and revisionhistory of container images in the storage service 290. By storing thismetadata separately in the registry metadata service 222, the registrymetadata service 222 may provide a fast interface for operations seekingor utilizing this information. Another advantage presented by storingmetadata separately in the registry metadata service 222 is thatmetadata about the data stored in the storage service 290 may bemanipulated (e.g., modified, marked for deletion, mark as inaccessible,etc.) in the registry metadata service 222 without locking data in thestorage service 290.

The autoscaling group 232 may be a group of computing nodes that canhave their numbers increased or decreased according to predefinedconditions (e.g., processing unit load falling above or below aspecified threshold, etc.). For example, the scaling service manager maydecrease the number of computing nodes in the auto-scaling group duringlow demand by removing computing nodes from the group and may increasethe number of computing nodes in the auto-scaling group during demandpeaks by instantiating or adding computing nodes to the auto-scalinggroup. In some embodiments, a customer can provide, such as through aweb interface or application programming interface, the conditions thatcause computing nodes to be added or removed from the auto-scaling groupfor the customer's respective repositories. In this manner, computingcapacity for the container repository can be increased or decreasedaccording to conditions specified by the customer.

FIG. 3 illustrates an example 300 garbage collection of an embodiment ofthe present disclosure. Specifically, FIG. 3 depicts a container image352 comprising a series of six layers (labeled as subscripts 1, 2, 3, 4,5, and 6) that has been uploaded to a registry 302, such as thecontainer registry 202 of FIG. 2, three times (images 346A-46B) overthree time periods. A series of layers may begin with a base image/layerfor the underlying operating system (e.g., Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.). Forexample, layers 1-3 of the container image 352 may comprise layers ofthe underlying operating system. Layers 4-6, likewise, may compriselayers of one or more software applications (e.g., WordPress, ApacheHTTP Server, etc.) to be installed to the underlying operating system.Each layer may have an associated content-addressable identifier, whichmay be generated by calculating a checksum (e.g., MDS, SHA1, SHA256,SHA512, etc.) for the layer. At a first time (time t₁), the containerimage 352 is stored in the registry 302 as an initial version 346A(image v1). Because none of the layers 1-6 have been previously storedin the registry 302, all of the layers are stored in the registry 302 asthe initial version 346A (with subscript 1 representing the layerversion) with a manifest 350A that describes the layers in the containerimage 352 and their locations.

In some examples, a “manifest” may refer to metadata about the containerimage as well as metadata about the set of layers that the containerimage is comprised of. The manifest may be stored as a separate file, orin a database in a separate field from the container image. In thismanner, the manifest specifies which layers are associated with thecontainer image, and thus, when a new container image is uploaded, itcan be determined from the manifest which layers of the image may or maynot already be stored in the registry 302. The manifest may be a filewritten in any suitable format, such as using JSON.

At a second time (time t₂), a new version of the container image 352 isuploaded to the registry 302. A determination is made that only layers 1and 2 have changed since the container image 352 was saved as theinitial version 346A. Consequently, the second version 346B (image v2)is stored with the updated layers 1₂ and 2₂ and a manifest 350Bindicating the locations of the layers of the version of the containerimage 352 at the second time (e.g., that layers 1₂ and 2₂ may be foundwith the second version 346B and that layers 3₁-6₁ may be found with theinitial version 346A). It can be seen in the example 300, however, thatafter time t₂, storage space is being taken up by layers that are nolonger being referenced by the most recent version/manifest (image v2).That is, layers 1₁-2₁, stored with the initial version 346A are orphaned(i.e., unlinked to a tagged container image in the manifest) in theregistry 302.

Likewise, it can be seen that, at a third time (time t₃), another newversion of the container image 352 is uploaded to the registry 302 and adetermination is made that layer 6 has changed since the previousversion (the second version 346B) was stored. Consequently, a thirdversion 346C (image v3) is stored with the updated layer 6₃ and amanifest 350C indicating the locations of the layers of the containerimage 352 at the third time (e.g., that layers 1₂ and 2₂ may be foundwith the second version 346B, that layers 3₁-5₁ may be found with theinitial version 346A, and that layer 6₃ may be found with the thirdversion 346C). Again, it can be seen in the example 300, however, thatafter time t₃, storage space is being taken up by layers that are nolonger being referenced by the most recent version/manifest (image v3).That is, layers 5₁ and 6₁, stored with the initial version 346A areorphaned (i.e., unlinked to a tagged container image in the manifest) inthe registry 302.

The system of the present disclosure contemplates garbage collectionfunctionality to clean out unreferenced layers and versions from theregistry 302. Unreferenced layers may include layers that have beenflagged/marked as containing a security vulnerability (e.g., in themanner described in FIGS. 4 and 5). In some embodiments, one or moreapplication programming interfaces relating to garbage collection areprovided to customers, and garbage collection may be performed on aparticular repository in response to a call to one of the applicationprogramming interfaces (e.g., CleanRegistry( )) at the behest of thecustomer associated with the particular repository. Garbage collectionadditionally may be performed as a security precaution; for example, inan event where a customer inadvertently uploads an insecure version ofthe container image (e.g., credentials embedded in a file, etc.), thecustomer may upload a corrected version of the container image and thencall a garbage collection application programming interface todelete/remove the previous version (i.e., the insecure version) of thecontainer image from the repository. Alternatively, rather thanuploading a corrected version of the container image, the customer maycall the garbage collection application programming interface todelete/remove the most recent uploaded container image (i.e., theinsecure container image), and then go back to using the previousversion of the container image; effectively performing a rollback.

In other embodiments, garbage collection is performed automaticallyaccording to a predefined schedule or upon the occurrence ofpredetermined events. For example, garbage collection may be performedeach Saturday at midnight. As another example, garbage collection may beperformed for every 1,000 gigabytes of data uploaded to the repository.As still another example, garbage collection may be performed each timea container image is stored in the repository.

Tags may be applied to one or more container images by the customer. Insome examples, a “tag” may refer to a label associated with one or morecontainer images for the purpose of grouping the container images. Forexample, a tag may be created with the label “latest version.” In thisexample, at an initial time (time t₁), a set of container images,including the initial version 346A may be tagged as the “latestversion.” At the next time (time t₂), another set of container images,including the second version 346B, may be updated (e.g., per requestfrom the customer uploading the other set of container images) to be the“latest version.” In this case, the tag, “latest version” now would nolonger point to the initial version 346A, rendering the initial version346A untagged. Likewise, at a third time (time t₂), a third set ofcontainer images, including the third version 346C, may be updated to bethe “latest version,” in which case the second version 346B would beleft untagged, and so on. Tags may overlap; for example, a containerimage tagged as “engineering configuration” may include layers that arealso used in a container image tagged as “marketing configuration.” In asituation where an instruction has been given to garbage collect/delete“engineering configuration”-tagged container images, the system of thepresent disclosure may retrieve a list of the “engineeringconfiguration” container images, and, based on metadata about thosecontainer images, determine which layers of the “engineeringconfiguration container” images may also be tagged with a differentactive tag (e.g., “marketing configuration”). The layers of containerimages tagged with “engineering configuration” may be deleted only ifthey are not tagged by another active tag; e.g., the layers of containerimages tagged with a “marketing configuration” may not be deleted.

The metadata about the container images may be stored in a registrymetadata service, such as the registry metadata service 222 of FIG. 2.In this way, the registry metadata service may be queried for themetadata rather than the container registry itself, in order to quicklyand efficiently determine which layers/images can be cleaned up duringgarbage collection without burdening the container registry withmetadata queries. Returning to FIG. 3, a process for garbage collectionmay begin by reading the most recent manifest for the container image352 (e.g., the one tagged “latest version”) to determine the locationsof the layers for the current version of the container image 352. Then,the process may walk backwards through the previous manifests andversions of the container image 352 to locate layers not referenced bythe most recent manifest. Depending on the particular implementation,these located layers may be immediately deleted or may be flagged/markedfor deletion (e.g., corresponding metadata in the metadata store may beupdated to include/append a code, label, or symbol signifying that thelayer is to be deleted) at a later date (e.g., according to apredetermined schedule or scheme). At the later date, a deletion serviceor process may go through the repository, identify the layers flaggedfor deletion, and delete the identified layers. If all layers for animage are unlinked, the entire image may be flagged as un-referenceable,and, to the customer, may appear as though it has been deleted (e.g.,the image may be inaccessible and unlistable/unviewable to the user).

As a result of garbage collection run after time t₂, layers 1₁-2₁ may bedeleted or flagged as un-referenceable 348. Likewise, as a resultgarbage collection run after time time t₃, layers 5₁ and 6₁ may beflagged as un-referenceable 348. Objects flagged as un-referenceable(e.g., the orphaned layers described above and layers flagged asun-referenceable in the manners described in FIGS. 4 and 5) may bedeleted according to a predetermined schedule or scheme, and customersmay be prevented from launching container images having un-referenceableobjects (e.g., requests to launch container images includingun-referenceable objects may be denied). Furthermore, customers may beunable to view, list, or locate un-referenceable objects, and it mayappear to the customers as if the objects were deleted, but may, infact, only be hidden from the customers by the system of the presentdisclosure. Consequently, the system of the present disclosure mayprevent container images having layers flagged as un-referenceable fromlaunching, and, in some implementations, may flag such container imagesthemselves as un-referenceable. Referring back to FIG. 2, the operationsof the garbage collection of FIG. 3 may query the registry metadataservice 222 to find repositories upon which to perform garbagecollection operations, perform the garbage collection, and communicatewith the container registry 202 to actually remove orphaned layers.

FIG. 4 illustrates an example 400 of an embodiment of the presentdisclosure. Specifically, FIG. 4 depicts a security sweep of one or morerepositories of a container registry, such as the container registry 202of FIG. 2. In some embodiments, the system of the present disclosure isconfigured to perform security sweeps based on security vulnerabilities,licensing, or other compliance issues. For example, because containerimages in the repository are comprised of layers, if it is known that alayer has a security vulnerability, the security sweep of the presentdisclosure may scan container images in the repository looking for thatparticular layer. If the security sweep finds the particular version ofthe particular layer within a container image, it may flag it for somefurther security action. Security actions may include sending analert/notification to the customer whose repository in which theinsecure layer was found, preventing the container image in which theinsecure layer was found from being launched, deleting the containerimage in which the insecure layer was found, automatically updating thecontainer image to include a version of the software application withoutthe security vulnerability (e.g., a previous version, the latestversion, etc.), and so on. As noted, each layer may be associated with acontent-addressable identifier (e.g., checksum), in which case thesecurity sweep may be efficiently conducted by only looking for theoccurrence of the content-addressable identifier associated with thesecurity vulnerability, thereby saving the need for scanning individualfiles of each container image.

For example, referring back to FIG. 3, if it is known (e.g., by systemadministrators of the computing resource service provider, by thecustomer, by a vendor of the container image, etc.) that a particularlayer of the container image of an underlying Ubuntu operating systemhas a security vulnerability, the security sweep may scan the registry302 for occurrences of a content-addressable identifier associated withthat particular layer. For example, the security sweep may discover fromthe manifest 350B that the content-addressable identifier of layer 2₂listed in the manifest 350B matches the content-addressable identifierprovided to the security sweep associated with the insecure layer.Consequently, the security sweep may flag layer 2₂ as un-referenceable,thereby preventing layer 2₂ from being used.

In FIG. 4, the security sweep 454 is searching repositories 452A-52B fora layer that has a known security vulnerability. In the example 400, thesecurity vulnerability is known to be associated with acontent-addressable identifier, illustrated in the example 400 as thereference identifier 456. For example, it may be that a publiclyavailable layer of a particular version of an operating system has aknown Secure Shell (SSH) vulnerability, and the publicly available layerhas a content-addressable identifier of “df9cb78ee4b0,” the securitysweep 454 may search the manifests in the repository forcontent-addressable identifiers of layers matching “df9cb78ee4b0.”Whether a security vulnerability exists may be determined by a vendor ofsoftware (e.g., a vendor providing the particular publicly availablelayer of the previous example), determined by the computing resourceservice provider hosting the container registry/repositories, ordetermined by the customer of the computing resource service providerassociated with the particular repository being swept.

In the latter case, in some implementations a container registryfront-end service, such as the container registry front-end service 214of FIG. 2, provides an application programming interface that thecustomer can call and through which the customer can specify acontent-addressable identifier for the layer that the customer wishes tohave swept from his/her repository by the security sweep 454. In thislatter case, the reasons for performing the sweep may be at thediscretion of the customer and may not necessarily be for securityvulnerability purposes; e.g., the customer may simply decide thatcertain applications should be updated or no longer need to be includedin the container image. As noted in the present disclosure, in someembodiments the manifests/metadata is searched using a registry metadataservice, such as the registry metadata service 222 of FIG. 2. In someembodiments, a customer can specify, such as through an applicationprogramming interface service provided by a container registry front-endservice, one or more content-addressable identifiers proactively; thatis, the customer may specify that if the security sweep 454 ever finds amatch between the one or more content-addressable identifiers and alayer in the repository to perform some action (e.g., flag the layer,notify the customer, rolled back to a previous version, etc.).Additionally or alternatively, in some embodiments, a customer canspecify (e.g., via an application programming interface, through a userinterface, etc.) whether or not to perform a vulnerability sweep on oneor more repositories of the customer, which levels of vulnerabilities toignore (e.g., vulnerabilities may be assigned levels according to anamount of security risk they present), and which what actions to performfor different levels of vulnerabilities (e.g., delete software imagesassociated with high levels and terminate any applications that may berunning that correspond to the deleted software images, roll back asoftware image associated with medium levels to a previous version, senda notification message to the account of the customer as a result ofdetecting a low level vulnerability, etc.).

In a first scenario, the security sweep 454 searches the manifests ofthe first repository 452A for a match between the reference identifier456 and the content-addressable identifiers 458 of the layers stored inthe first repository 452A. As can be seen from the example 400, no matchto the reference identifier 456 is found in the first scenario, and theoutput 460 from the sweep is that no security vulnerabilities werefound. In a second scenario, the security sweep 454 searches a secondrepository 452B for a match between one of the content-addressableidentifiers 458 of the layers in the second repository 452B and thereference identifier 456. As can be seen in this scenario, the securitysweep 454 found a match between the reference identifier 456 and one ofthe content-addressable identifiers 458 of the layer in the secondrepository 452B. Consequently, the output 460 from the second scenariois that a security vulnerability corresponding to the referenceidentifier 456 was found. Based on this output, various securitymeasures may be taken such as deletion of the layer with the securityvulnerability, automatic update of the layer to a version not having thesecurity vulnerability, and/or notification of a customer associatedwith the second repository 452B that the repository contained a securityvulnerability. Because the security sweep 454 only searches forcontent-addressable identifiers, is minimally intrusive (i.e., does notactually look at the contents of the layer) and the actual containerimage itself may be encrypted in the repository without affecting thesecurity sweep 454. Referring back to FIG. 2, the operations may querythe registry metadata service 222 to find repositories upon which toperform security sweep operations and compare content-addressableidentifiers 458 with the reference identifier 456.

FIG. 5 illustrates an example 500 of an embodiment of the presentdisclosure. Specifically, FIG. 5 depicts a scanning mechanism 550 forscanning container images stored in the repository for data defined byusers (e.g., malware, sensitive data, trade secret data, etc.). Althoughthis scan bears similarities to the security sweep illustrated in FIG.4, the scanning mechanism 554 may perform a deeper scan than searchingfor a matching content-addressable identifier. That is, the scanningmechanism 554 may open each container image (which may be stored as atarball or other archive file format) in a specified repository, andscan through the image files for specified (e.g., specified through anapplication programming interface of a container registry front-endservice) criteria, depicted in the example 500 as the reference criteria556. The criteria may be a digital fingerprint, such as bit string that,for all practical purposes, uniquely identifies the computer file or acharacteristic (e.g., the malware, virus, trade secret, or othervulnerability) being sought, such that the scanning mechanism 554 maysearch one or more a computer files in a layer for the occurrence of adigital fingerprint. Note that in some implementations, the criteria maybe a set of conditions (e.g., a file that is executable, has a file namethat begins with “x,” has a file size less than 500 kilobytes, and waslast modified between the dates of Oct. 24, 2009 and Nov. 1, 2009).

In one example, a customer associated with a repository may request thatthe repository be scanned for the presence of specified credentials(e.g., such as if an application were compiled with hardcoded accesscredentials). In this example, the customer may specify the credentialsas the reference criteria 556. The scanning mechanism 554 may alsosearch the manifest for the presence of the reference criteria 556. Inanother example, the customer may specify one or more signatures ofknown malware as the reference criteria 556, and thereby direct thescanning mechanism to scan the repository for the presence of suchmalware. In still another example, the customer may specify one or morecharacter strings or filenames associated with a trade secret orsensitive data as the reference criteria 556, and the scanning mechanism554 may search the files within the opened/unpacked layers for a matchto the one or more specified character strings or filenames.

In an example implementation, the repositories comprise one or more datastores, and each stored container image is stored within one of the datastores. After each container image is scanned for the presence ofspecified reference criteria, a table may be updated to include atimestamp indicating at which time the container image was scanned forthe specified reference criteria. In this manner, the timestamp may beretrieved at the behest of the customer as evidence of when thecontainer image was scanned for the specified criteria.

In some embodiments, customers can specify, such as through anapplication programming interface, certain reference criteria thatcurrent and/or future container images should be scanned for. In thismanner, as new container images are uploaded to the repository, they maybe un-archived and scanned for any of the reference criteria previouslyspecified by the customer. Furthermore, in some implementations,container images may be scanned as part of the process of launching thecontainer image into a software instance; e.g., the container image maybe opened/unpacked and scanned prior to launching it into a softwarecontainer.

However, if the customer has directed that the container images beencrypted in the repository and the scanning mechanism 554 does not haveaccess to a key to decrypt the container images, the scanning mechanism554 may be unable to scan the container images for the referencecriteria 556 in this manner. Therefore, additionally or alternatively,in some of these embodiments, whenever any of the container images ofthe customer stored in the repository are opened/decrypted under theauthority of the customer (e.g., such as to launch in a containerinstance such as the container instance 204 of FIG. 2), the scanningmechanism 554 can be configured to scan the opened container image forany of the previously specified reference criteria. In these latterembodiments, the scanning mechanism 554 is able to scan encryptedcontainer images without having access to the decryption key.

In some implementations, however, a decryption key for the containerimages is shared with the scanning mechanism 554. In these embodiments,the scanning mechanism 554 is configured to use the shared decryptionkey to decrypt the container images in order to scan for the referencecriteria 556. Reference criteria 556 may include criteria such as namesof known binaries, instructions to scan for files lacking checksums,scanning of known file names, scanning text files for a specified stringof characters, and so on. The reference criteria 556 may includerestrictions or exceptions for scanning of certain file types; forexample, the reference criteria 556 may include instructions specifyingthat certain image file types be exempt from scanning.

Thus, FIG. 5 depicts a first scenario where the scanning mechanism 554opens a first container image 552A and scans through a file structure558, searching for the reference criteria 556. As can be seen from theexample 500, no match to the reference criteria 556 is found in thefirst scenario, and the output 560 from the scan is that no match wasfound. In a second scenario, the scanning mechanism 554 again opens asecond container image 552B and scans through the file structure 558,searching for the reference criteria 556. However, in the secondscenario it is seen that a match is found in the second container image552B with the reference criteria 556. Consequently, the output 560 fromthe second scenario is that a match was found with the referencecriteria 556. The output 560 that a match was found may result in one ormore actions, including notifying a customer associated with therepository in which the second container image was stored that a matchwas found, flagging the second container image 552 or its layers asun-referenceable, or deletion of the second container image 552B.

Note that in various embodiments, a match does not necessarily requireequality. For example, two values may match if they are not equal, butmathematically equivalent. As another example, two values may match ifthey correspond to a common object (e.g. value) or are in somepredetermined way complementary and/or they satisfy one or more matchingcriteria. Generally, any way of determining whether there is a match maybe used.

FIG. 5 further depicts a third scenario. In the third scenario, acontainer image 552C is stored in the repository in encrypted form.However, if the container image 552C is decrypted (such as by an entityauthorized by the customer to extract and launch the container image orby providing the scanning mechanism 554 with a decryption key 594 fordecrypting the container image, as described above), the scanningmechanism 554 would be able to scan the unencrypted file structure asshown in the third scenario. For example, if the customer provided thecomputing resource service provider enough access to unencrypt thecontainer image 552C, such as by sharing the decryption key 594 with thecomputing resource service provider, the scanning mechanism 554 may beable to unencrypt the container image 552C and/or layers of thecontainer image 552C to scan the contents. In some examples, thedecryption key 594 may be shared with the computing resource serviceprovider such that the computing resource service provider maintains itin secret and uses it to perform scanning at any time. In otherexamples, the decryption key 594 may be shared from the customer at anytime that the customer requests that the computing resource serviceprovider perform scanning on the container image 552C. In still otherexamples, the customer shares the decryption key 594 with the computingresource service provider in order to launch the container image 552Cinto a software container, and, concurrent with the launching, thecomputing resource service provider may decrypt and perform scanning onthe container image 552C in the manner described. Referring back to FIG.2, the operations may query the registry metadata service 222 to findrepositories upon which to perform the scanning operations.

In some embodiments, the system of the present disclosure providesend-to-end container encryption. That is, a container registry front-endservice, such as the container registry front-end service 214 of FIG. 2,may provide an application programming interface to a customer thatallows the customer to upload a container image to a repository of thecustomer to be stored in encrypted form using server-side encryption.When the customer requests to launch the container image in a containerinstance (such as through another application programming interface),the servers of the system of the present disclosure may control thedecryption and launching of the container image in the containerinstance such that, once uploaded, the container image never leaves theenvironment of the computing resource service provider in unencryptedform, thereby preventing unauthorized access and/or duplication of thecontainer image. In this manner, software vendors may provide theirsoftware in global repositories and allow other users/customers to run(e.g., in exchange for a fee) their software in the environment of thecomputing resource service provider without the risk of unauthorizedduplication of their software. In some embodiments, a key managementservice, such as the key management service 220 of FIG. 2 can issue akey (such as a public key of a public-private key pair) to the customerso that the customer can perform client-side encryption of containerimages, with the system of the present disclosure having access to a keyfor decryption (such as the private key of the public-private key pair)in order to perform scans for vulnerabilities, such as in the mannerdescribed for the third scenario of FIG. 5. For example, the customermay encrypt a container image and upload the container image through thecontainer registry front-end service, whereupon the system of thepresent disclosure may decrypt the container image in memory and scanthe decrypted container image for reference criteria.

FIG. 6 illustrates examples 600 another embodiment of the presentdisclosure. Specifically, FIG. 6 depicts functionality of a containerregistry proxy 662 being used a system of the present disclosure totranslate from one container engine to another. In a first example, acontainer instance 618 is hosting a running container of using aparticular container engine (e.g., the Docker container engine, theRocket container engine, etc.). Because different container engines mayhave their own application programming interfaces and own protocols, inthe first example, the container registry proxy 662 operates as a proxythat converts application programming interface requests from theparticular container engine running in the container instance 618 andconverts/translates the requests to a predetermined format acceptable bythe container registry front-end service 614. As shown in FIG. 6, thecontainer running in the container instance 618 makes a request, whichcould be a first type 664A (i.e., corresponding to a first containerengine type) of request or a second type 664B (i.e., corresponding to asecond container engine type) of request. The container registry proxy662 intercepts the request, and, regardless of whether the request wasreceived as the first type 664A or the second type 664B, the containerregistry proxy may convert the request to either the first type 664A,the second type 664B, or even, as shown, a third type of request 664C(i.e., whichever type of request format the container registry front-endservice 614 is configured to support). For example, among other things,the third type of request 664C may include a digital signature (whichmay be signed using a session key in a manner similar to that describedin U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/248,953, entitled “TECHNIQUES FORCLIENT CONSTRUCTED SESSIONS,” incorporated by reference), from thecontainer service that provides proof of authorization to serviceendpoints of other components of the environment in which the containeris running (e.g., a distributed computing system of a computing resourceservice provider), such as the container registry front-end service 214of FIG. 2, that the container is authorized to have the particularrequest fulfilled.

As an example, a command for listing all of the tags of the containerimage of a first container engine type may have a specific format (e.g.,“/[version number]/[repository name]/tags”). However, a containerregistry front-end service may be configured to accept differentparameters, a different order of parameters, and/or additionalparameters. The container registry proxy 662, then, may intercept thecommand, separate/extract the parameters provided with the command, andreformat/translate the command in the appropriate order and with theappropriate parameters into a format compatible with the containerregistry front-end service.

In a second example, a customer 666 has uploaded a container image of afirst container engine type 652A to the customer's repository in acontainer registry 602. The container image may be uploaded through acontainer registry proxy 662, which may be similar to the compatibilityregistry proxy 262 of FIG. 2. From there, the container image of thefirst container engine type 652A may be forwarded to a containerconverter 692 in the container registry 602. In some examples, the term“customer” may refer to a system of a customer entity (such as anindividual, company, or other organization) that utilizes servicesprovided by a computing resource service provider. Examples of such asystem may be an individual computing device, a mainframe, a customeraccessible virtual machine instance, or other system capable ofcommunicating with one or more of the provided services.

In an embodiment, the container converter 692 is configured to receivethe container image of the first container engine type 652A and rebuildthe container image as a container image of a second container enginetype 652B and store the container image of the second container enginetypes 652B in the repository 690 of the customer 666. In this manner,the container registry 602 provides the customer 666 with the option ofrunning the container image using either container engine type (A or B)or both. Another advantage provided by the container registry proxy 662of the second example, may be that, if the container service is onlyconfigured to receive requests from a specific, compatible containerengine type, the container registry proxy 662 can discreetly (i.e.,without being apparent to the customer 666) convert a container imagebuilt by the customer 666 using an incompatible container engine typeinto a container image having the specific, compatible container enginetype. Alternatively, rather than storing the container image of thesecond container engine type 652B in the container registry 602, thecontainer registry proxy 662 may rebuild the container image of thefirst container engine types 652A into the container image of the secondcontainer engine type 652B on-the-fly in response to a request to launchthe container image in a container instance as the second containerengine type 652B. Finally, in the second example, upon receiving arequest to launch the container image, the container image of the secondcontainer engine type 652B may be retrieved from the repository 690,whereupon it will pass through the container registry proxy 662, whichwill then ensure that the correct container engine is used when thecontainer image is launched in an instance.

Referring back to FIG. 2, the functionality of container registry proxy662 of FIG. 6 may reside within the autoscaling group 232 or beintegrated with the functionality of the container registry 202 itself.The container registry proxy 662 may perform its translation based oninput from the container engine 208, that input including requestinformation and an authorization token, which may be similar to thesecurity token 974 of FIG. 9. The container registry proxy 662 may haveaccess to a key management service, such as the key management service220, for decrypting and obtaining information from the authorizationtoken, such as credentials and/or additional information about thecustomer and/or the customer account. Based on the information yieldedfrom the authorization token, the container registry proxy 662 may placeapplication programming interface calls to the container registryfront-end service 214 under the authority of the customer.

FIG. 7 illustrates an example 700 of an embodiment of the presentdisclosure. Specifically, FIG. 7 depicts using a container registry 702of the present disclosure, similar to the container registry 202 of FIG.2, being used in conjunction with a container marketplace 768. Asdepicted in the example 700, a software vendor 766 may develop and builda software application, and upload the software application as acontainer image 752 to a global repository in the container registry702. A global repository, as opposed to a private repository, may allowother users access to download container images from the globalrepository, such as in exchange for a fee. Such container images in aglobal repository may be available to for purchase (i.e., transacted)through the container marketplace 768, which may be an onlinemarketplace in the form of a website or other user interface from whichlicenses for one or more container images may be selected and/orpurchased by consumers. The example 700 further depicts a customer 770who has selected, through the container marketplace 768, the containerimage 752 stored in the container registry 702, and directed that one ormore copies of the container images 752 be downloaded and launched inone or more container instances 718 belonging to the customer 770.

One advantage presented by the example 700 is that because, as notedabove, container images of the present disclosure may be stored aslayers, the container image 752 may be smaller than a full containerimage because other components/dependencies of the container image mayalready reside in the container registry 702, and consequently thecontainer image 752 may only include layers containing differences fromthe layers already present in the container registry 702. Furthermore,because the container image 752 may be stored as layers, individuallayers may be separately priced in the container marketplace 768 therebyproviding price flexibility. For example, if the container image 752comprises an operating system layer developed by a first softwarevendor, and one or more layers associated with individual softwareapplications developed by a second software vendor, the first softwarevendor may set a price for the operating system layer, and the secondsoftware vendor may set prices for the one or more software applicationlayers. In this manner, the first software vendor may change the pricefor the operating system layer without involving the second softwarevendor. Furthermore, if the second software vendor updates one of thesoftware application layers, the customer 770 seeking to update to thenew software application may only need to pay for the updated softwarelayer, and need not repurchase the operating system layer or otherapplication layers.

Additionally, because the one or more container instances 718 may beexecuting under the control of the container service, and beingmonitored by one or more agents, such as the agent 206 of FIG. 2),metrics about the usage (e.g., processor usage, memory usage, storageused) of the software containers of the container images may be trackedand charged to the consumer on a usage basis rather than or in additionto a per container image basis. For example, the container image 752 maybe downloaded and installed to the one or more container instances 718of the customer 770 without charge by the software vendor 766. However,in this example, the customer 770 may be charged by the usage (e.g.,according to metrics such as average processor usage per day, peakmemory usage each hour, number of instances/copies being run,combination of any of the above, etc.) of the container image. In thismanner, a customer who only uses the software application of thecontainer image 752 intermittently, need not pay as much for thecontainer image 752 as a customer who uses the software application 24hours per day/7 days per week.

FIG. 8 illustrates an example 800 of an embodiment of the presentdisclosure. Specifically, FIG. 8 depicts a container marketplace forpurchasing and running time-limited containers. In the example 800, asoftware vendor 866 uploads a container image 852 to a non-privaterepository in the container registry 802, making it available for free,purchase, or lease from a container marketplace 868 for a duration oftime specified by the software vendor 866. As a result of the durationof time expiring, the running software may be renderedunavailable/inaccessible to the purchaser. For example, the softwarevendor 866 may be a vendor of a particular operating system (e.g., RedHat Linux, Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X, etc.). In conjunction withmaking the operating system available for purchase through the containermarketplace 868, the software vendor 866 may specify that, “Purchase ofthis product entitles the purchaser to run this operating system forthree hours.” Whereupon, upon purchase of the product by the customer870 through a user interface for the container marketplace 868, theoperating system may be launched and executed as a software container ina container instance 818 of a container service on behalf of thecustomer 870 for three hours. When the three hours is up, the operatingsystem may be terminated, suspended, or access to the operating systemby the customer 870 may be denied, according to the terms of thepurchase agreement. In some embodiments, the time limit/duration may beexecution time of the software container. In other implementations,additionally or alternatively, the time/limit duration may be an amountof time since purchase or an amount of time since the software containerwas first launched, irrespective of actual run time (e.g., if thesoftware container is terminated or suspended, the timer does not stop).It should be noted, that the container image 852 may be any type ofapplication (e.g., web hosting service, word processing application,database, etc.). The software vendor 866 may specify various securityroles and permissions that the purchasing customer 870 may have in orderto utilize the purchased software product. The computing resourceservice provider providing the container service may deny the customer870 the ability to utilize a secure shell (SSH) to access the containerrunning the software in order to further prevent potential softwarepiracy of the container image 852.

In this manner, at no point in time can the customer 870 actuallydownload the container image 852 (because the download and installationis performed by the container service on hardware of the containerservice), thereby providing a degree of piracy protection to thesoftware vendor 866. Furthermore, being time-based provides the softwarevendor 866 with pricing flexibility. Because the software would berunning in a container service, such as the container service describedin U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/538,663, incorporated byreference herein, running time of the software may be accuratelytracked, such as by an agent running in the container instance 204, andtherefore actual usage of the software by the customer 870 may bedetermined and the software may be caused to expire at the end of theduration specified by the license agreement of the product purchased bythe customer 870.

The container marketplace 868 may also permit the bundling of differentcontainer images. For example, if the customer 870 desires to runWordPress for two hours and store the WordPress information in a MySQLdatabase, the customer may select a WordPress container image and aMySQL container image from the container marketplace 868, select a runduration, run each of those container images in separate, but linked,software containers (e.g., configured to accept the same ports, and soon), and then after the duration is over, the containers may terminate,suspend, or other action as defined by the software vendor 866.

The time limit may be enforced in a variety of ways. In oneimplementation, upon launching the software of the container image 852in the container instance 818, a notification indicating an expirationtime for the software will be sent to a timer service (not pictured)that will, upon reaching the expiration time call back to the containerinstance 818 with an instruction to terminate the container running thesoftware. Once terminated, the container instance 818 and/or thecontainer service may free up the resources that were being used by thesoftware container. In some embodiments, the container marketplace 868allows the customer 870 to add time to the running duration of thesoftware. For example, if the customer 870 purchased license to run thesoftware of the container image 852 for two hours, and after the firsthour the customer 870 realizes he/she wishes to run the software for anadditional three hours, the customer 870 may purchase an additionalthree hours of run time for the software through the containermarketplace 868.

In another implementation, blocks of run time can be purchased for a setof running software containers based on the container image 852. Inother words, an aggregation of the running time of concurrently-runningsoftware in the cluster of container instances may be deducted from thepurchased block of time (e.g., two container instances each running thedeployed software for one minute, deplete the allotted time by twominutes). That is, the customer 870 may purchase a 1,000 hour block oftime for software associated with the container image 852 launched andrunning in 100 different software containers; that is, the 100 differentsoftware containers may be running in parallel, but may not all berunning at the same time (e.g., new software containers may be launchedas demand increases and software containers may be terminated as demanddecreases). Once the set of 100 different software containers havecumulatively used up the 1,000 hour block of time, the 100 softwarecontainers may be terminated together. In some cases a customer 870 maypurchase a first software package (e.g., a software application forprocessing data) on a time basis, and a second software package (e.g.,database application) having no expiration, configured to interact withthe first software package. In this manner, the first software packagecan process data for the purchased duration, store the processed datausing the second software package, and upon expiration of the firstsoftware package, the process data is still persisted by the secondsoftware package.

As noted, upon the expiration of the allotted time, other actions may betaken by the computing resource service provider rather than terminationof the running software containers. For example, the state of thesoftware container at the time of the expiration may be stored in a datastore or other persistent storage at least temporarily, and if thecustomer 870 chooses to purchase additional time, the software containermay be relaunched to continue execution from the state it was in priorto the expiration using the stored state. Similarly, a snapshot of thesoftware container could be taken at the time of expiration, and if thecustomer chooses to purchase more time, the software container may berelaunched from the snapshot.

FIG. 9 illustrates an example 900 of an embodiment of the presentdisclosure. Specifically, FIG. 9 depicts using token-basedauthentication with a container registry of the present disclosure, suchas the container registry 202 of FIG. 2. In the example 900, a softwaredeveloper 966 seeks to build and upload a container image 952 to acontainer repository 990 of the software developer 966. A containerimage 952 may be comprised of a set of layers, and, during an upload(also referred to as a “push”), requests may be made to determinewhether individual layers of the set of layers have already beenuploaded. Each of these requests may include a determination whether theentity making the request is authorized to do so.

This authorization workflow is displayed in the example 900. In theexample, the software developer 966 makes a request to an instanceservice interface 912, such as the instance service interface 212 ofFIG. 2, for a security token 974. The request may include credentials orproof of credentials 978 (e.g., username/password, biometric identifyinginformation, one-time passcode, a cryptographic hash of any or all ofthe aforementioned data, etc.) usable to authenticate the softwaredeveloper 966.

The credentials or proof of credentials 978 may be exchanged for thesecurity token 974. The security token 974 may operate as a requesttoken (e.g., may be used for a certain number of requests and/or untilsuch time as the security token 974 expires), similar to a session-basedtoken. The security token 974 may include the credentials or proof ofcredentials 978 in encrypted form. In some implementations, the securitytoken 974 may include additional information, such as an expirationtime, in encrypted form. To perform the exchange of credentials or proofof credentials 978 for the security token 974, the instance serviceinterface 912 may provide a first signed request 972A to a securitytoken application programming interface 976 in a request for thesecurity token 974. The first signed request 972A may include thecredentials or proof of credentials 978 and may be signed using aderived key that has been derived from a shared key held by thecontainer registry front-end service 914 in a manner similar to thederivation of derived keys described in U.S. patent application Ser. No.13/248,953, incorporated by reference herein, such that the securitytoken application programming interface 976 can verify the first signedrequest 972A.

Upon authenticating the credentials or proof of credentials 978 andverifying that the signature in the first signed request 972A is valid,the security token application programming interface 976 may generatethe security token 974. As noted, the security token 974 may be thecredentials or proof of credentials 978 that are encrypted such thatthat the security token 974 may be decrypted by a cryptographic key heldby the container registry proxy 962 that is not shared; for example, thecontainer registry proxy 962 may have a private key of a public-privatekey pair, and the security token 974 provided by the security tokenapplication programming interface 976 may be encrypted using a publickey of the public-private key pair.

The security token 974 may be passed to the software developer 966and/or the instance service interface 912. The security token 974 mayinclude a signature of the security token application programminginterface 976 and/or the instance service interface 912 certifying theauthenticity of the security token 974. Once the security token isreceived by the software developer 966, subsequent commands passed toand by the instance service interface 912 need only include the securitytoken 974, rather than the credentials or proof of credentials 972 asproof that the software developer 966 is authorized to have certainrequests fulfilled, thereby presenting less risk of the credentials orproof of credentials 978 being compromised. As noted, the security token974 may be preconfigured with certain restrictions, such as permissionsand/or expiration dates, by encrypting the restrictions into thesecurity token 974. In this manner, restrictions can be readily checkedby the container registry proxy 962 simply by decrypting the securitytoken 974, while simultaneously preventing unauthorized entities (e.g.,those without a key usable to decrypt the security token 974) fromaccessing the data (e.g., permissions, expiration dates, credentials,etc.) encrypted into the security token 974. Thus, the security token974 may be used for various requests as proof of authentication to thecontainer registry front-end service 914 for as long as the securitytoken 974 remains valid.

Thus, subsequently, the instance service interface 912 may pass thesecurity token 974 to the container registry proxy 962 for each layer ofthe software image being uploaded by the software developer to thecontainer repository 990. The container registry proxy 962 may decryptthe token to obtain the credentials or proof of credentials 978. Alsoencrypted within the security token 974 may be restrictions, such astime limits on the security token 974 (e.g., a time duration after whichthe security token expires, a number of times that the security tokenmay be used, etc.). Thus, the container registry proxy 962 mayauthenticate the credentials or proof of credentials 978, determinewhether the token is still valid, and, if so, may provide thecredentials or proof of credentials to the container registry front-endservice 914 in a second signed request 972B. The second signed request972B may be signed using the same or different derived key derived fromthe shared key held by the container registry front-end service 914, asdescribed above. Note that, if the token is determined not to be valid(e.g., expired), the container registry proxy 962 may return an error tothe software developer 966 (e.g., “This token is no longer valid; youmust re-authenticate.”).

As shown in the example 900, the software developer pushes the layers(including the manifest) of the container image 952 and the securitytoken 974 in application programming interface requests to the containerregistry front-end service 914. A container registry proxy 962intercepts the requests and the security token 974, decrypts thesecurity token 974 as needed using a cryptographic key it maintains as asecret, and verifies that the security token 974 is valid.Verification/authentication of the security token 974 includes verifyingthat the credentials or proof of credentials 978 extracted from thesecurity token 974 match valid credentials of the software developer966, and that any limitations/restrictions on use of the security token974 (e.g., expiration times, number of uses, etc.) have not beenexceeded, and so on. If the security token 974 is invalid, the containerregistry proxy 962 may return an error to the software developer 966indicating that the token is invalid and/or has expired, and that thesoftware developer must re-authenticate with the credentials or proof ofcredentials 972 in order to proceed.

However, if the security token 974 is valid, the container registryproxy 962 determines/derives a signing key, as described above, based onthe security token 974, and sends a second signed request 972B and thelayers of the container image 952 to the front-end service 914 as if thecontainer registry proxy 962 were, itself, the software developer 966.The container registry front-end service 914 may verify the secondsigned request 972B, determine whether individual layers of the layersof the container image 952 have already been stored in the containerrepository 990, and upload the layers that have not already been storedin the container registry 990 as the container image 952. Note that asimilar process would follow if the software developer 966 took actionto download a container image from the container registry 990 as well orinstead. That is, while the process described above may be applied touploading a software image to the container repository 990, the sameprocess (i.e., obtaining the security token 974 from which thecredentials may be extracted by the container registry proxy 962, and soon) may be utilized for a customer who requests that a software image bedownloaded or launched into container instances, such that the securitytoken 974 can provide proof that the software developer 966 isauthorized to have certain requests fulfilled, without having to providethe credentials or proof of credentials 972.

FIG. 10 illustrates an example 1000 of an embodiment of the presentdisclosure. In embodiments of the present disclosure, containerregistries can be physically located on servers in different geographicregions in order to provide faster uploading and downloading ofcontainer images. That is, each of the servers 1084A-84B may have alocal container registry for customers/developers located in thatregion, and container images may be cached based on previous usage ofcontainer images by the customer/developer and/or resource needs of thecontainer image. Specifically, FIG. 10 depicts a content deliverynetwork 1080 configured to make container images stored in containerrepositories of the present disclosure, such as the container registry202 of FIG. 2, available to multiple geographic regions so thatcustomers in those regions are quickly able to upload, download, andotherwise access those container images. In some cases, the ability todeliver the container images may be offered by a computing resourceservice provider to customers for an additional fee.

In the example 1000, a software developer 1066A in a first geographicregion 1082A may upload a container image 1052 to a first data server1084A of the content delivery network 1080 located in the firstgeographic region 1082A. The content delivery network 1080 may be adistributed system of servers deployed in multiple geographic regions inaround the world, communicating with each other via a network, such asthe Internet. The content delivery network 1080 may host content (e.g.,software images) on the servers throughout the various geographicregions by copying the content from a server in one geographic region toa server in another geographic region. Customers of the computingresource service provider realize a benefit by being able obtain contentmore quickly from the servers most geographically proximate to thecustomer. The content delivery network 1080 can then provide thecontainer image 1052 to a second data server 1084B of the contentdelivery network 1080 located in a second geographic region 1082B of acustomer 1066B. In this manner, the customer 1066B, by being able todownload the container image 1052 from a server in the same geographicalregion, the customer 1066B is able to receive the container image 1052more quickly than downloading the container image 1052 from the firstserver 1044A located in the first geographic region 1082A.

The example 1000 further contemplates intelligent caching of containerimages. For example, if the customer 1066B has 1,000 container instancesrunning a first version of the container image 1052 on servers in thesecond geographical region 1082B, the system of the present disclosuremay predict that if the software developer 1066A ever updates thecontainer image 1052, then it is likely that the customer 1066B willsoon wish to update the 1,000 container instances to the new version ofthe container image 1052. In preparation for this event, the system ofthe present disclosure may cache one or more layers, or as many as maybe needed to update the container instances, in local memory or fastpersistent storage of servers in the second geographical region 1082B.In this manner, the customer 1066B can quickly deploy the new version ofthe container image 1052 to the container instances. In someimplementations, the system is configurable such that the system mayautomatically update the container instances of the customer 1066B inthe second geographical region 1082B with the new version of thecontainer image 1052 as a result of the new version being made uploadedto the first data server 1084A. Because the container image 1052 may becomprised of layers, and the update may only involve updating a fewlayers (rather than all of the layers of the container image 1052), theamount of data stored in cache for the update may be much smaller thancaching the entire container image 1052.

One method of predictive caching may be based on historical deploymentsof container images from the same repository. For example if thecustomer 1066B has, at a previous time, uploaded a container image andsubsequently downloaded/launched that container image in five containerinstances, and if, at another previous time, the customer 1066B uploadedanother container image and subsequently downloaded/launched thatcontainer image five container instances again, the system of thepresent disclosure, upon detection that the customer 1066B has againuploaded a container image, may predict that the customer 1066B willnext want to download/launch that container image into the fivecontainer instances and may cache that container image in preparationfor subsequent deployment. Note that predictive caching need not berestricted to embodiments utilizing a content delivery network; that is,image layers may be cached based at least in part on previous deploymentactivity with container instances hosted by computer systems located ina same region as the repository.

Similarly, the system of the present disclosure may track the containerimage that is downloaded and launched by customers, and may track, suchas via an agent like the agent 206 of FIG. 2 or via scheduler of thetype described in in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/538,663,incorporated by reference herein, which software applications arecurrently running container instances, when they run, and how often theyare run. Using this data, the system may predict that if an update ismade to a container image corresponding to a long-running (e.g., theapplication corresponding to the container image runs continuously, onaverage, for multiple days or some other threshold period) and/orfrequently-running application (e.g., the application corresponding tothe container image is launched, on average, multiple times per day, orsome other threshold frequency), that the updated container image or theparticular container image layers corresponding to the applicationshould be cached in preparation of an update to the long running and/orfrequently running application. If previous history indicates that thecustomer 1066B typically performs deployment at a particular time of dayor day of week (e.g., midnight on Saturday), intelligent caching maymake efficient use of memory resources by only loading the layersnecessary for the deployment just in time (JIT) for (e.g., one minuteprior to deployment time) the predicted deployment time. Cachingstrategies additionally or alternatively could include a least-recentlyused caching (LRU) strategy, a hit-based strategy, pre-fetching, andvarious combinations of strategies described above. Note that it iscontemplated that various other cache optimization strategiesalternative or in addition to those described may be used.

FIG. 11 illustrates an example 1100 of an embodiment of the presentdisclosure. Often, container images are built according to instructionsin a specialized text file written in a certain prescribed syntax. Typesof such files are makefiles, Dockerfiles, and so on, referred to in thepresent disclosure generally as “build files.” Building a containerimage may involve executing such text files. FIG. 11 depicts anautomated build and deployment service whereby customers can uploadfiles to the managed source control service 1186 and an automated buildservice 1184 will perform the operations to build the container imagefrom the uploaded files. In the example 1100, a customer 1166, uploads aset of build artifacts 1158, including the build file for the set offiles, via an application programming interface of the managed sourcecontrol service 1186. The managed source control service 1186 forwardsthe set of build artifacts 1158 to the automated build service 1184builds the container image 1152 in accordance with the build file andthe container engine type that the set of build artifacts 1158 have beenconfigured for or specified as, and stores the container image 1152 inrepository of the customer 1166 in the container registry 1102.

In some embodiments, the managed source control service 1186 may be aversion control service hosted by the computing resource serviceprovider of the container service that allows customers to store andmanage build artifacts, such as documents, source code, and binary filesin customer repositories. The set of build artifacts 1158 may beinformation useable to build a software container. Consequently, the setof build artifacts 1158 may include one or more of a configuration file,makefile, a source code file, a data file, a binary file, and otherresources and instructions needed to build and/or deploy and/or test acontainer image.

In other embodiments, the managed source control service 1186 may be anapplication installed by the customer 1166 onto a server under thecontrol of the customer 1166. In still other embodiments, the managedsource control service 1186 may be provided by different computingresource service provider from the computing resource service providerhosting the container service 1192. In some implementations, therepositories may be encrypted. The managed source control service 1186may provide a user interface and/or application programming interfacesfor creation and management of a customer's repositories by the customer1166. In embodiments, the customer 1166 may have already uploaded theset of build artifacts 1158 to the managed source control service 1186and may need only upload a build artifact that indicates the location ofa code repository with the managed source control service for the set ofbuild artifacts 1158 needed to automatically build and deploy thecontainer image 1152.

In some embodiments, the automated build service is configurable toperform rolling deployments and rollbacks. For example, the automatedbuild service 1184 may communicate with a scheduler, such as a schedulerof the type described in in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/538,663,incorporated by reference herein, to deploy a new version of a containerimage to a predetermined percentage or number of container instances ata time, only deploying the new version to the next predeterminedpercentage or number of container instances if the previous deploymentwas successful. This process may continue until an entire fleet ofcontainer instances is updated to the new version of the containerimage. However, if an attempt to deploy the new version to apredetermined percentage or number of container instances isunsuccessful, the automated build service 1184 may automatically reversecourse and roll back newly updated container instances to the previoussoftware version. In this manner, software deployments may be rolledforward or rolled back one portion at a time.

For example, the Docker container engine uses a descriptive file format,called a Dockerfile, that allows users to build Docker images. In thisexample, the customer 1166 may be working on an update to a softwareapplication. The customer 1166 may build and test the updated sourcecode locally. When the customer 1166 is satisfied that the updatedsource code is ready to be packaged up and deployed, the customer 1166may provide the source code and the build file as the set of buildartifacts 1158, and the automated build service 1184 may automaticallybuild new versions of the container image from the set of buildartifacts 1158 provided and cause the container registry front-endservice 1114 to store the new version in a repository 1190 of thecustomer. In some embodiments, the automated build service is furtherconfigured to automatically deploy the new version of the containerimage to container instances of the customer 1166 and upgrade currentlyrunning previous versions of this container image in those containerinstances.

For example, the customer may upload the set of build artifacts 1158 tothe container registry front-end service, whereupon the automated buildservice 1184 may build and cause the container registry front-endservice 1114 to communicate with a scheduler (e.g., via an applicationprogramming interface) to deploy the updated container image 1152 fromthe repository 1190 to a container service 1192 of a computing resourceservice provider, such as the container service described in U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 14/538,663, incorporated by reference herein. Thecontainer service may be a service comprising a collection of computerresources provided to a customer by a computing resource serviceprovider and configured to instantiate containers on behalf of acustomer. The container service 1192 may cause the updated containerimage 1152 to be launched in one or more container instances 1104 inaccordance with a deployment strategy defined/specified by the customer1166 (e.g., strategy that effectively instructs the automated buildservice 1184 to, “each time a new version of this software is uploaded,roll out the software in this predefined manner”).

In some cases, building and deploying may include building the softwareimage from files stored with the managed source control service 1156. Inother cases, the source code files may be precompiled into binarieswithin the managed source control service 1156 and building anddeploying may involve copying the precompiled binaries to a destinationcontainer.

For embodiments of the present disclosure, various deployment schemesare contemplated. For example, one deployment scheme may be stop the oldversions of running software, and then launch the updated version of thesoftware. As another example, a rolling deployment (such as wasdescribed above) may be desirable in some implementations. One exampleof a rolling deployment may be a serial deployment; that is one instanceof a running old version of the software is stopped and the new versionof the software is launched for the instance, before the deploymentmoves on to the next instance having a running old version of thesoftware. Still another deployment strategy may be a blue-greendeployment, where the new version of the software is installed incontainer instances in a test network running in parallel with aproduction network (i.e., hosting the container instances running oldversion of the software), and when the new software is fully installed,switching the test network to be the production network and taking theold production network off-line. In some implementations, the system ofthe present disclosure provides functionality for a customer to be ableto define the customer's preferred deployment scheme, such as in a JSONdocument that specifies which applications to update and how thecustomer wants them to be updated.

FIG. 12 illustrates an entity relationship diagram 1200 of a containerregistry of an embodiment of the present disclosure. As can be seen inFIG. 12, the container registry may comprise a set of containerregistries allocated to different sub-fleets. The account may relate toa given customer of a computing resource service provider, and may havea one-to-one correspondence with the container registry 1204. The region1206 may refer to a location of the repository, which may be a physicallocation, a location within a data center, or a virtual location. Theregion 1206 may have a zero-to-many correspondence with the registries.Each container registry 1204 may correspond to a set of zero-to-manyrepositories 1208, which may be owned by a given account. Therepositories 1208 are locations for uploading container images 1212,namespace optional, in the manner described in the present disclosure.Hence, the repository 1208 has a one-to-many correspondence to thecontainer images 1212 stored at that location. The tag 1210 may be amutable pointer to a container image 1212 for conveniently referringback to that container image 1212. Thus the repository 1208 may have amany-to-many correspondence to the tags 1210, which in turn may have amany-to-many correspondence with the container images 1212. As describedin the present disclosure, each container image 1212 may be made up of aset of files and a manifest known as layers 1214. Consequently, as canbe seen, the image 1212 has the zero-to-many correspondence to the layer1214.

FIG. 13 is a block diagram illustrating an example of a process 1300 forstoring a container image in a repository in accordance with variousembodiments. Some or all of the process 1300 (or any other processesdescribed, or variations and/or combinations of those processes) may beperformed under the control of one or more computer systems configuredwith executable instructions and/or other data, and may be implementedas executable instructions executing collectively on one or moreprocessors. The executable instructions and/or other data may be storedon a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium (e.g., a computerprogram persistently stored on magnetic, optical, or flash media).

For example, some or all of process 1300 may be performed by anysuitable system, such as a server in a data center, by variouscomponents of the environment 1700 described in conjunction with FIG.17, such as the web server 1706 or the application server 1708, bymultiple computing devices in a distributed system of a computingresource service provider, or by any electronic client device such asthe electronic client device 1702. The process 1300 includes a series ofoperations wherein a request is received to store a software image, aset of layers are determined to be stored for the container image, amanifested generated, and the layers in the manifest are stored as thecontainer image.

In 1302, a request is received, such as through the container registryfront-end service 114 of FIG. 1, to store a container image. Thecontainer registry be comprised of a set of repositories, each assignedto a customer of a computing resource service provider. As described inthe present disclosure the request may be received from any of a varietyof entities, such as from a computing device being operated by thecustomer associated with the repository, and automated build service,such as the automated build service 1184 of FIG. 11, or some otherentity authorized by the customer associated with the repository. Therequest may indicate the container image being uploaded and may includecredentials or an authentication token, such as the security token 974of FIG. 9.

In 1304, the system may analyze the indicated container image todetermine a set of layers, which may be a subset of image files of thecontainer image. The system may determine, based on information receivedwith the request of 1302, whether the container image is an update to acontainer image already stored in the repository of the customer orwhether the container image is a new image being stored in the customerrepository. The system may determine which of the layers have notpreviously been stored in the customer repository (or, in someimplementations, a global repository), and determined to only storethose layers not previously stored in the customer repository. In someembodiments, the determination of which layers have not been previouslystored in the customer repository is made querying data stored in aregistry metadata storage service, such as the registry metadata service222 of FIG. 2.

In 1306, a manifest may be generated for the subset of layersrepresenting the container image being uploaded. As noted, the manifestcan be comprised of metadata about the container image as well asmetadata about the set of layers of which the container image iscomprised. In this manner, the manifest specifies which layers areassociated with the container image, and thus, when a new containerimage is uploaded, it can be determined from the manifest, which layersof the image may or may not already be stored in the customerrepository. In 1308, the subset of layers determined in 1304 may bestored with the manifest, such as in a data structure similar to the onedescribed in conjunction with FIG. 12. Note that one or more of theoperations performed in 1302-08 may be performed in various orders andcombinations, including in parallel.

FIG. 14 is a block diagram illustrating an example of a process 1400 forcausing a container image stored in a repository to be launched inaccordance with various embodiments. Some or all of the process 1400 (orany other processes described, or variations and/or combinations ofthose processes) may be performed under the control of one or morecomputer systems configured with executable instructions and/or otherdata, and may be implemented as executable instructions executingcollectively on one or more processors. The executable instructionsand/or other data may be stored on a non-transitory computer-readablestorage medium (e.g., a computer program persistently stored onmagnetic, optical, or flash media).

For example, some or all of process 1400 may be performed by anysuitable system, such as a server in a data center, by variouscomponents of the environment 1700 described in conjunction with FIG.17, such as the web server 1706 or the application server 1708, bymultiple computing devices in a distributed system of a computingresource service provider, or by any electronic client device such asthe electronic client device 1702. The process 1400 includes a series ofoperations wherein a request is received to launch the container image,the manifest for the requested container image is located, the layerscomprising the container image are located based on the manifest, thecontainer image is downloaded to a container instance, in the containerimage is launched in a software container of the container instance.

In 1402, the system receives a request (e.g., through the containerregistry front-end service 114 of FIG. 1) to launch a specifiedcontainer image. As described in the present disclosure the request maybe received from any of a variety of entities, such as from a computingdevice being operated by the customer associated with the repository,and automated build service, such as the automated build service 1184 ofFIG. 11, a container marketplace, such as the container marketplaces 768and 868 of FIGS. 7 and 8, or some other entity authorized by thecustomer associated with the repository. The request may indicate thecontainer image being uploaded and may include credentials or anauthentication token, such as the security token 974 of FIG. 9.

In 1404, a manifest for the specified container image may be obtained.In some embodiments, this manifest is obtained from a registry metadatastorage service, such as the registry metadata service 222 of FIG. 2. Inother implementations, the manifest is obtained from the containerregistry. Based on the metadata in the manifest, in 1406, the layerscomprising the container image may be located; that is, because onlylayers that have been updated may be uploaded with a most recent versionof the container image, not all layers comprising the container imagemay be located together. In some cases, the manifest may providelocations where other layers may be located. In other cases, themanifest may include a content-addressable identifier associated withthe other layers, and the location of the other layers may be locatedusing the content-addressable identifier.

Once all of the layers corresponding to the container image are located,in 1408, the container image may be downloaded to a container instanceof the customer. In some cases, a container instance may be unavailable,and in such cases, a new container instance may be instantiated for thepurpose of launching and running the software of the container image ina software container. In some cases, a task definition file may specifyan amount and type of resources to allocate to a container for runningthe software of the container image, and a container instance may beselected based on the available resources of the container instance anda selection scheme optimized for efficient resource allocation.

Finally, in 1410, the container image may be launched as a runningsoftware container in the selected container image. The softwarecontainer may continue to run as long as desired by the customer, or, ashas been described in the present disclosure, may expire and terminateor suspend after a predetermined duration of time. Note that one or moreof the operations performed in 1402-10 may be performed in variousorders and combinations, including in parallel.

FIG. 15 is a flowchart illustrating an example of a process 1500 foraccessing a repository in accordance with various embodiments. Some orall of the process 1500 (or any other processes described, or variationsand/or combinations of those processes) may be performed under thecontrol of one or more computer systems configured with executableinstructions and/or other data, and may be implemented as executableinstructions executing collectively on one or more processors. Theexecutable instructions and/or other data may be stored on anon-transitory computer-readable storage medium (e.g., a computerprogram persistently stored on magnetic, optical, or flash media).

For example, some or all of process 1500 may be performed by anysuitable system, such as a server in a data center, by variouscomponents of the environment 1700 described in conjunction with FIG.17, such as the web server 1706 or the application server 1708, bymultiple computing devices in a distributed system of a computingresource service provider, or by any electronic client device such asthe electronic client device 1702. The process 1500 includes a series ofoperations wherein a request is received to access the repository, adetermination is made whether the requester has a valid authorizationtoken. If so, access to the repository may be granted. If not, anotherdetermination is made whether the requestor is authorized to have therequest fulfilled, and, if so, an authorization token may be providedand access to the repository may be granted.

In 1502, the system performing the process 1500 may receive a requestfrom a client (e.g., a client device) to access (e.g., download from,upload to, delete from, list images stored in, search the contents of,etc.) a repository assigned to a customer of a computing resourceservice provider. In 1504, if the request includes an authorizationtoken, the system performing the process 1500 may determine whether theauthentication token is a valid authentication token that indicates therequesting entity should have access to the repository. Validation ofthe authentication token may be performed, by, for example, decrypting aset of credentials from the authentication token and verifying that theset of credentials are associated with an entity authorized to have therequest received in 1502 to be fulfilled. If the authorization token issuccessfully validated, the system performing the process 1500 mayproceed to 1506, whereupon the requesting entity is provided access tothe specified repository.

Otherwise, if the request does not include a token indicating that therequesting entity is authorized to access the repository or if the tokenprovided is invalid (e.g., the token has expired, the token has beentampered with or corrupted, the token is the token for a differentrepository, etc.), the system performing the process 1500 may proceed to1508, whereupon the requesting entity may be presented with an errormessage (e.g., “Unauthorized Access,” etc.) and/or with an interface toprovide credentials (e.g., username and password, multi factorauthentication, etc.) as required to determine whether the requestingentity is authorized access the repository. This credential informationmay be encapsulated in an authorization header and provided to anauthentication service for authentication.

In 1510, if the authentication service indicates that the credentialinformation provided does not indicate that the entity should be allowedaccess to the repository, the system performing the process 1500 mayproceed to 1512, whereupon access to the repository by the requestingentity is denied. This denial may be in the form of an error message, aninterface allowing the entity to try again, an interface allowing theentity to retrieve a forgotten username/password, or some otherappropriate response. In some implementations, successful and failedattempts to access the repository are logged.

However, in 1514, if the authentication service indicates that thecredential information does indicate that the entity should be allowedaccess to the repository, the system performing the process 1500 mayproceed to 1514, whereupon an authorization token encoding or otherwiseindicating that the requesting entity has permission to access thespecified repository, may be generated. The authorization token may be astring of characters generated by encrypting, such that the token may bedecrypted by the key held by a container registry proxy or containerregistry front-end service, credentials and/or proof of credentials(e.g., a cryptographic hash of credentials) of an entity authorized tomake the request and/or a digital signature usable at least in part atleast for certain amount of time (e.g., the token may have beengenerated at least in part using time-based parameters such that thetoken has an effective expiration date, after which the token is nolonger considered valid) for validating access to the repository.

An example algorithm for generating a token is shown below:

  generateToken(sessionToken, key)   {     // Realm + Repository +Permissions + Session Token     message = “repo1.us-west-1.com\nrepository=abc/123\naccess=write\n” + sessionToken;     version =“01”;     signature = HMAC(message, key);     return sVersion +signature + “.” + sessionToken;   }

The authorization token may be provided in a response to the requestingentity, whereupon the system performing the process 1500 may return to1502 to request access to the repository, this time the requestincluding the newly generated authorization token. This newly generatedauthorization token then should be successfully validated in 1504,thereby granting the requesting entity access to the repository. Notethat one or more of the operations performed in 1502-14 may be performedin various orders and combinations, including in parallel.

FIG. 16 is a block diagram illustrating an example of a process 1600 forlaunching a software container from the perspective of an agent, such asthe agent 206 of FIG. 2, in accordance with various embodiments. Some orall of the process 1600 (or any other processes described, or variationsand/or combinations of those processes) may be performed under thecontrol of one or more computer systems configured with executableinstructions and/or other data, and may be implemented as executableinstructions executing collectively on one or more processors. Theexecutable instructions and/or other data may be stored on anon-transitory computer-readable storage medium (e.g., a computerprogram persistently stored on magnetic, optical, or flash media).

For example, some or all of process 1600 may be performed by anysuitable system, such as a server in a data center, by variouscomponents of the environment 1700 described in conjunction with FIG.17, such as the web server 1706 or the application server 1708, bymultiple computing devices in a distributed system of a computingresource service provider, or by any electronic client device such asthe electronic client device 1702. The process 1600 includes a series ofoperations wherein the agent detects an event requiring an image to bedownloaded from a repository and launched in a current containerinstance, the agent obtains a valid authentication token permittingaccess to the repository, obtaining the image from the repository, andlaunching and running the image in the current container instance.

In 1602, the system performing the process 1600 detects an eventrequiring obtaining a software image from a repository corresponding toa customer owner of the container instance running on the system. Oneexample of such an event may be receiving a request by a customerthrough an application programming interface of a container registryfront-end service directing the agent to obtain and launch the specifiedcontainer image. Another example of an event of this kind may bedetection by a security sweep or scanning mechanism, such as thesecurity sweep 454 or scanning mechanism 554 of FIGS. 4 and 5respectively, that the current running version of the software of thecontainer image is noncompliant or contains a vulnerability such thatthe current running version must be updated or rolled back to adifferent version of the software of the container image. Still anotherexample of an event of this kind may be that the customer has uploaded anew version of source code of the container image to an automated buildservice, such as the automated build service 1184 of FIG. 11, and theautomated build service communicates to the system performing theprocess 1600 that the new version should be automatically deployed toreplace the current version running in the container instance of thesystem.

In 1604, the system may obtain a valid authentication token by making acall to a container registry front-end service, such as the containerregistry front-end service 114 of FIG. 1, such as in the mannerdescribed in conjunction with FIG. 9, in order to allow the system toact on behalf of the customer. The authentication token may be validuntil it expires. In 1606, having obtained the authentication token, thesystem may make a request through a container engine, such as thecontainer engine 208 of FIG. 2, to obtain the specified version of thecontainer image, the request including the authentication token. In1608, as a result of the request being fulfilled and the systemobtaining the specified version of the container image, the agent maystop any currently running version of the software of the containerimage, and launch the obtain diversion of the software of the containerimage as a running software container in the current container instance.Note that one or more of the operations performed in 1602-08 may beperformed in various orders and combinations, including in parallel.

Note too that, in the context of describing disclosed embodiments,unless otherwise specified, use of expressions regarding executableinstructions (also referred to as code, applications, agents, etc.)performing operations that “instructions” do not ordinarily performunaided (e.g., transmission of data, calculations, etc.) denote that theinstructions are being executed by a machine, thereby causing themachine to perform the specified operations.

FIG. 17 illustrates aspects of an example environment 1700 forimplementing aspects in accordance with various embodiments. As will beappreciated, although a web-based environment is used for purposes ofexplanation, different environments may be used, as appropriate, toimplement various embodiments. The environment includes an electronicclient device 1702, which can include any appropriate device operable tosend and/or receive requests, messages or information over anappropriate network 1704 and, in some embodiments, convey informationback to a user of the device. Examples of such client devices includepersonal computers, cell phones, handheld messaging devices, laptopcomputers, tablet computers, set-top boxes, personal data assistants,embedded computer systems, electronic book readers, and the like. Thenetwork 1704 can include any appropriate network, including an intranet,the Internet, a cellular network, a local area network, a satellitenetwork or any other network and/or combination thereof. Components usedfor such a system can depend at least in part upon the type of networkand/or environment selected. Protocols and components for communicatingvia such a network are well known and will not be discussed in detail.Communication over the network 1704 can be enabled by wired or wirelessconnections and combinations thereof. In this example, the network 1704includes the Internet, as the environment includes a web server 1706 forreceiving requests and serving content in response thereto, although forother networks an alternative device serving a similar purpose could beused as would be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art.

The illustrative environment includes an application server 1708 and adata store 1710. It should be understood that there could be severalapplication servers, layers or other elements, processes or components,which may be chained or otherwise configured, which can interact toperform tasks such as obtaining data from an appropriate data store.Servers, as used, may be implemented in various ways, such as hardwaredevices or virtual computer systems. In some contexts, servers may referto a programming module being executed on a computer system. As used,unless otherwise stated or clear from context, the term “data store”refers to any device or combination of devices capable of storing,accessing and retrieving data, which may include any combination andnumber of data servers, databases, data storage devices and data storagemedia, in any standard, distributed, virtual or clustered environment.The application server 1708 can include any appropriate hardware,software and firmware for integrating with the data store 1710 as neededto execute aspects of one or more applications for the electronic clientdevice 1702, handling some or all of the data access and business logicfor an application. The application server 1708 may provide accesscontrol services in cooperation with the data store 1710 and is able togenerate content including, text, graphics, audio, video and/or othercontent usable to be provided to the user, which may be served to theuser by the web server 1706 in the form of HyperText Markup Language(“HTML”), Extensible Markup Language (“XML”), JavaScript, CascadingStyle Sheets (“CSS”), or another appropriate client-side structuredlanguage. Content transferred to a client device may be processed by theelectronic client device 1702 to provide the content in one or moreforms including, forms that are perceptible to the user audibly,visually and/or through other senses. The handling of all requests andresponses, as well as the delivery of content between the electronicclient device 1702 and the application server 1708, can be handled bythe web server 1706 using PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (“PHP”), Python,Ruby, Perl, Java, HTML, XML, or another appropriate server-sidestructured language in this example. Further, operations described asbeing performed by a single device may, unless otherwise clear fromcontext, be performed collectively by multiple devices, which may form adistributed and/or virtual system.

The data store 1710 can include several separate data tables, databases,data documents, dynamic data storage schemes and/or other data storagemechanisms and media for storing data relating to a particular aspect ofthe present disclosure. For example, the data store 1710 may includemechanisms for storing production data 1712 and user information 1716,which can be used to serve content for the production side. The datastore 1710 also is shown to include a mechanism for storing log data1714, which can be used for reporting, analysis or other purposes. Itshould be understood that there can be many other aspects that may needto be stored in the data store 1710, such as page image information andaccess rights information, which can be stored in any of the abovelisted mechanisms as appropriate or in additional mechanisms in the datastore 1710. The data store 1710 is operable, through logic associatedtherewith, to receive instructions from the application server 1708 andobtain, update or otherwise process data in response thereto. Theapplication server 1708 may provide static, dynamic or a combination ofstatic and dynamic data in response to the received instructions.Dynamic data, such as data used in web logs (blogs), shoppingapplications, news services and other applications may be generated byserver-side structured languages as described or may be provided by acontent management system (“CMS”) operating on, or under the control of,the application server 1708. In one example, a user, through a deviceoperated by the user, might submit a search request for a certain typeof item. In this case, the data store 1710 might access the userinformation 1716 to verify the identity of the user and can access thecatalog detail information to obtain information about items of thattype. The information then can be returned to the user, such as in aresults listing on a web page that the user is able to view via abrowser on the electronic client device 1702. Information for aparticular item of interest can be viewed in a dedicated page or windowof the browser. It should be noted, however, that embodiments of thepresent disclosure are not necessarily limited to the context of webpages, but may be more generally applicable to processing requests ingeneral, where the requests are not necessarily requests for content.

Each server typically will include an operating system that providesexecutable program instructions for the general administration andoperation of that server and typically will include a computer-readablestorage medium (e.g., a hard disk, random access memory, read onlymemory, etc.) storing instructions that, as a result of execution by aprocessor of the server, allow the server to perform its intendedfunctions.

The environment, in one embodiment, is a distributed and/or virtualcomputing environment utilizing several computer systems and componentsthat are interconnected via communication links, using one or morecomputer networks or direct connections. However, it will be appreciatedby those of ordinary skill in the art that such a system could operateequally well in a system having fewer or a greater number of componentsthan are illustrated in FIG. 17. Thus, the depiction of the exampleenvironment 1700 in FIG. 17 should be taken as being illustrative innature and not limiting to the scope of the disclosure.

The various embodiments further can be implemented in a wide variety ofoperating environments, which in some cases can include one or more usercomputers, computing devices or processing devices that can be used tooperate any of a number of applications. User or client devices caninclude any of a number of general purpose personal computers, such asdesktop, laptop or tablet computers running a standard operating system,as well as cellular, wireless and handheld devices running mobilesoftware and capable of supporting a number of networking and messagingprotocols. Such a system also can include a number of workstationsrunning any of a variety of commercially available operating systems andother known applications for purposes such as development and databasemanagement. These devices also can include other electronic devices,such as dummy terminals, thin-clients, gaming systems and other devicescapable of communicating via a network. These devices also can includevirtual devices such as virtual machines, hypervisors and other virtualdevices capable of communicating via a network.

Various embodiments of the present disclosure utilize a network thatwould be familiar to those skilled in the art for supportingcommunications using any of a variety of commercially availableprotocols, such as Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol(“TCP/IP”), User Datagram Protocol (“UDP”), protocols operating invarious layers of the Open System Interconnection (“OSI”) model, FileTransfer Protocol (“FTP”), Universal Plug and Play (“UpnP”), NetworkFile System (“NFS”), Common Internet File System (“CIFS”), andAppleTalk. The network 1704 can be, for example, a local area network, awide-area network, a virtual private network, the Internet, an intranet,an extranet, a public switched telephone network, an infrared network, awireless network, a satellite network, and any combination thereof. Insome embodiments, connection-oriented protocols may be used tocommunicate between network endpoints. Connection-oriented protocols(sometimes called connection-based protocols) are capable oftransmitting data in an ordered stream. Connection-oriented protocolscan be reliable or unreliable. For example, the TCP protocol is areliable connection-oriented protocol. Asynchronous Transfer Mode(“ATM”) and Frame Relay are unreliable connection-oriented protocols.Connection-oriented protocols are in contrast to packet-orientedprotocols such as UDP that transmit packets without a guaranteedordering.

In embodiments utilizing a web server, the web server can run any of avariety of server or mid-tier applications, including Hypertext TransferProtocol (“HTTP”) servers, FTP servers, Common Gateway Interface (“CGP”)servers, data servers, Java servers, Apache servers, and businessapplication servers. The server(s) also may be capable of executingprograms or scripts in response to requests from user devices, such asby executing one or more web applications that may be implemented as oneor more scripts or programs written in any programming language, such asJava®, C, C#, or C++, or any scripting language, such as Ruby, PHP,Perl, Python or TCL, as well as combinations thereof. The server(s) mayalso include database servers, including those commercially availablefrom Oracle®, Microsoft®, Sybase®, and IBM® as well as open-sourceservers such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MongoDB, and any other servercapable of storing, retrieving, and accessing structured or unstructureddata. Database servers may include table-based servers, document-basedservers, unstructured servers, relational servers, non-relationalservers or combinations of these and/or other database servers.

The environment can include a variety of data stores and other memoryand storage media as discussed above. These can reside in a variety oflocations, such as on a storage medium local to (and/or resident in) oneor more of the computers or remote from any or all of the computersacross the network 1704. In a particular set of embodiments, theinformation may reside in a storage-area network (“SAN”) familiar tothose skilled in the art. Similarly, any necessary files for performingthe functions attributed to the computers, servers or other networkdevices may be stored locally and/or remotely, as appropriate. Where asystem includes computerized devices, each such device can includehardware elements that may be electrically coupled via a bus, theelements including, for example, a central processing unit (“CPU” or“processor”), an input device (e.g., a mouse, keyboard, controller,touch screen or keypad), and an output device (e.g., a display device,printer or speaker). Such a system may also include one or more storagedevices, such as disk drives, optical storage devices and solid-statestorage devices such as random access memory (“RAM”) or read-only memory(“ROM”), as well as removable media devices, memory cards, flash cards,etc.

Such devices also can include a computer-readable storage media reader,a communications device (e.g., a modem, a wireless or wired networkcard, an infrared communication device, etc.), and working memory asdescribed above. The computer-readable storage media reader can beconnected with, or configured to receive, a computer-readable storagemedium, representing remote, local, fixed, and/or removable storagedevices as well as storage media for temporarily and/or more permanentlycontaining, storing, transmitting, and retrieving computer-readableinformation. The system and various devices also typically will includea number of software applications, modules, services, or other elementslocated within a working memory device, including an operating systemand application programs, such as a client application or web browser.For example, customized hardware might also be used and/or particularelements might be implemented in hardware, software (including portablesoftware, such as applets) or both. Further, connection to othercomputing devices such as network input/output devices may be employed.

Storage media and computer readable media for containing code, orportions of code, can include any appropriate media known or used in theart, including storage media and communication media, such as, volatileand non-volatile, removable and non-removable media implemented in anymethod or technology for storage and/or transmission of information suchas computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules orother data, including RAM, ROM, Electrically Erasable ProgrammableRead-Only Memory (“EEPROM”), flash memory or other memory technology,Compact Disc Read-Only Memory (“CD-ROM”), digital versatile disk (DVD)or other optical storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magneticdisk storage or other magnetic storage devices or any other medium whichcan be used to store the desired information and which can be accessedby the system device. Based on the disclosure and teachings provided, aperson of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate other ways and/ormethods to implement the various embodiments.

The specification and drawings are, accordingly, to be regarded in anillustrative rather than a restrictive sense. However, it will beevident that various modifications and changes may be made thereuntowithout departing from the broader spirit and scope of the invention asset forth in the claims.

Other variations are within the spirit of the present disclosure. Thus,while the techniques are susceptible to various modifications andalternative constructions, certain illustrated embodiments thereof areshown in the drawings and have been described above in detail. It shouldbe understood, however, that there is no intention to limit theinvention to the specific form or forms disclosed, but on the contrary,the intention is to cover all modifications, alternative constructionsand equivalents falling within the spirit and scope of the invention, asdefined in the appended claims.

The use of the terms “a,” “an,” and “the” and similar referents in thecontext of describing the embodiments (especially in the context of thefollowing claims) are to be construed to cover both the singular and theplural, unless otherwise indicated or clearly contradicted by context.The terms “comprising,” “having,” “including,” and “containing” are tobe construed as open-ended terms (i.e., meaning “including, but notlimited to,”) unless otherwise noted. The term “connected,” whereunmodified and referring to physical connections, is to be construed aspartly or wholly contained within, attached to or joined together, evenif there is something intervening. Recitation of ranges of values aremerely intended to serve as a shorthand method of referring individuallyto each separate value falling within the range, unless otherwiseindicated and each separate value is incorporated into the specificationas if it were individually recited. The use of the term “set” (e.g., “aset of items”) or “subset” unless otherwise noted or contradicted bycontext, is to be construed as a nonempty collection comprising one ormore members. Further, unless otherwise noted or contradicted bycontext, the term “subset” of a corresponding set does not necessarilydenote a proper subset of the corresponding set, but the subset and thecorresponding set may be equal.

Conjunctive language, such as phrases of the form “at least one of A, B,and C,” or “at least one of A, B and C,” is understood with the contextas used in general to present that an item, term, etc., may be either Aor B or C, or any nonempty subset of the set of A and B and C, unlessspecifically stated otherwise or otherwise clearly contradicted bycontext. For instance, in the illustrative example of a set having threemembers, the conjunctive phrases “at least one of A, B, and C” and “atleast one of A, B and C” refer to any of the following sets: {A}, {B},{C}, {A, B}, {A, C}, {B, C}, {A, B, C}. Thus, such conjunctive languageis not generally intended to imply that certain embodiments require atleast one of A, at least one of B and at least one of C each to bepresent.

Operations of processes described can be performed in any suitable orderunless otherwise indicated or otherwise clearly contradicted by context.Processes described (or variations and/or combinations thereof) may beperformed under the control of one or more computer systems configuredwith executable instructions and may be implemented as code (e.g.,executable instructions, one or more computer programs or one or moreapplications) executing collectively on one or more processors, byhardware or combinations thereof. The code may be stored on acomputer-readable storage medium, for example, in the form of a computerprogram comprising instructions executable by one or more processors.The computer-readable storage medium may be non-transitory. Further, insome examples, computer systems are configured to implement one or moreservices that collectively perform operations of processes describedherein. Such computer systems may be configured, for instance, withapplicable hardware and/or software that enable the performance of theoperations. Further, computer systems that implement various embodimentsof the present disclosure may, in some examples, be single devices and,in other examples, be distributed computer systems comprising multipledevices that operate differently such that the distributed computersystem performs the operations described herein.

The use of any examples, or exemplary language (e.g., “such as”)provided, is intended merely to better illuminate embodiments of theinvention and does not pose a limitation on the scope of the inventionunless otherwise claimed. No language in the specification should beconstrued as indicating any non-claimed element as essential to thepractice of the invention.

Embodiments of this disclosure are described, including the best modeknown to the inventors for carrying out the invention. Variations ofthose embodiments may become apparent to those of ordinary skill in theart upon reading the foregoing description. The inventors expect skilledartisans to employ such variations as appropriate and the inventorsintend for embodiments of the present disclosure to be practicedotherwise than as specifically described. Accordingly, the scope of thepresent disclosure includes all modifications and equivalents of thesubject matter recited in the claims appended hereto as permitted byapplicable law. Moreover, any combination of the above-describedelements in all possible variations thereof is encompassed by the scopeof the present disclosure unless otherwise indicated or otherwiseclearly contradicted by context.

All references, including publications, patent applications, andpatents, cited are hereby incorporated by reference to the same extentas if each reference were individually and specifically indicated to beincorporated by reference and were set forth in its entirety.

What is claimed is:
 1. A system, comprising: one or more processors; andmemory including executable instructions that, as a result of executionby the one or more processors, cause the system to: receive, from afirst device associated with a first customer of a computing resourceservice provider, a container image and information specifying an eventtrigger for terminating execution of the container image, the computingresource service provider facilitating distribution of the containerimage from the first customer to a second customer, the container imagecomprising a set of software layers, the first customer located in afirst geographic region; store the set of software layers in a firstrepository associated with the first customer to form a stored containerimage, the first repository being located in the first geographicregion; copy the stored container image to a second repository to form acopied container image, the second repository located in a secondgeographic region different from the first geographic region; receive arequest, from a second device associated with the second customer of thecomputing resource service provider, to deploy the container image intoat least one virtual machine instance associated with the secondcustomer, the at least one virtual machine instance being located in thesecond geographic region; deploy the copied container image as asoftware container to execute in the at least one virtual machineinstance; and as a result of an occurrence of the event trigger,terminate execution of the software container.
 2. The system of claim 1,wherein the executable instructions that cause the system to deploy thecopied container image include instructions that cause the system to:determine, based at least in part on previous deployment activity ofvirtual machine instances of the second customer, to store the copiedcontainer image in cache memory as a cached container image; and deploythe cached container image as the software container to execute in theat least one virtual machine instance.
 3. The system of claim 1, whereinthe request is received through a user interface of an onlinemarketplace for vending container images, the online marketplace beinghosted by the computing resource service provider.
 4. The system ofclaim 3, wherein the event trigger is an expiration of a predeterminedtime limit for running the software container, the predetermined timelimit being determined in a transaction between the first customer andthe second customer through the user interface that resulted in therequest being received.
 5. The system of claim 1, wherein the eventtrigger is an expiration time for terminating execution of the containerimage.
 6. A computer-implemented method, comprising: receiving asoftware image associated with a first customer account of a computingresource service provider and criteria for identifying a specifiedevent, the software image comprising a set of image layers, thecomputing resource service provider facilitating distribution of thesoftware image to at least one software instance associated with asecond customer account of the computing resource service provider;storing the set of image layers in a first data object store associatedwith the first customer account to form a stored software image, thefirst data object store being located in a first geographic region;copying the stored software image to a second data object store to forma copied software image, the second data object store located in asecond geographic region different from the first geographic region;receiving a request to deploy the software image into at least onesoftware instance associated with the second customer account; deployingthe copied software image to at least one container instance to formdeployed software; and causing, as a result of identifying an occurrenceof the specified event, the deployed software to become unavailable tothe second customer account.
 7. The computer-implemented method of claim6, wherein deploying the software image includes: determining a firstinstance of the at least one container instance that fulfills a resourcerequirement specified for the software image; deploying the softwareimage to the first instance; and deploying, as a result of adetermination that deployment of the software image to the firstinstance was successful, the software image to a second instance thatfulfills the resource requirement specified for the software image. 8.The computer-implemented method of claim 6, wherein causing the deployedsoftware to be unavailable to the second customer account includes oneor more of: terminating a software container in the at least onecontainer instance to which the copied software image was deployed;suspending the software container in the at least one container instanceto which the copied software image was deployed; or denying, to entitiesassociated with the second customer account, access to the softwarecontainer in the at least one container instance to which the copiedsoftware image was deployed.
 9. The computer-implemented method of claim6, the method further comprising: gathering usage information of thedeployed software; and billing the second customer account and fundingthe first customer account based at least in part on the usageinformation.
 10. The computer-implemented method of claim 6, wherein thespecified event is an expiration of a time limit for running thedeployed software, the time limit specified by a customer associatedwith the first customer account.
 11. The computer-implemented method ofclaim 10, wherein: the at least one container instance is a containerinstance of a cluster of container instances; and the time limitcorresponds to an aggregation of time for running the deployed softwareby each container instance of the cluster running the deployed software.12. The computer-implemented method of claim 6, wherein the request isreceived as a result of a transaction conducted through an onlinemarketplace between a first customer associated with the first customeraccount and a second customer associated with the second customeraccount.
 13. The computer-implemented method of claim 12, the methodfurther comprising, as a result of a second transaction conductedthrough the online marketplace between the first customer and the secondcustomer: receiving criteria for identifying a second specified event;causing the deployed software to become available to the second customeraccount after the occurrence of the specified event; and causing, as aresult of identifying an occurrence of the second specified event, thedeployed software to become unavailable to the second customer account.14. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media havingcollectively stored thereon executable instructions that, as a result ofexecution by one or more processors of a distributed computer system,cause the distributed computer system to: receive a software imageassociated with a customer of a computing resource service provider andcriteria for identifying an event, the software image comprising a setof layers, the computing resource service provider facilitatingdistribution of the software image from the customer to an entityassociated with an instance that is physically located in a secondregion; store the set of layers in a first data store to form a storedset of layers, the first data store being physically located in a firstregion; copy the set of layers to a second data store to form a copiedset of layers, the entity being authorized to have the copied set oflayers launched as a container in the instance; launch the copied set oflayers as a container executing in the instance; and as a result ofidentifying an occurrence of the event, cause the container to beunavailable to the entity.
 15. The one or more non-transitorycomputer-readable storage media of claim 14, wherein: the software imageis a first image corresponding to a first container engine type; and theexecutable instructions further include instructions that cause thedistributed computer system to: build a second set of layers of a secondimage corresponding to a second container engine type based at least inpart the first image; and store the second set of layers in the firstdata store.
 16. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storagemedia of claim 14, wherein the executable instructions further includeinstructions that cause the distributed computer system to, further asthe result of identifying the occurrence of the event: store a currentstate of the container; and as a result of identifying an occurrence ofa second event: restore the container to the current state; and causethe container to be available to the entity.
 17. The one or morenon-transitory computer-readable storage media of claim 14, wherein theexecutable instructions further include instructions that cause thedistributed computer system to: receive a first application programminginterface request from the instance, the first application programminginterface request having a format that corresponds to a first containerengine type; translate the first application programming interfacerequest into a second application programming interface request having aformat that corresponds to a second container engine type; and providethe second application programming interface request to a service thatprocesses requests of the format that corresponds to the secondcontainer engine type.
 18. The one or more non-transitorycomputer-readable storage media of claim 14, wherein the executableinstructions further include instructions that cause the distributedcomputer system to: make a determination, based at least in part onprevious deployment activity authorized by the entity, whether to storeat least the copied set of layers in cache memory of one or morecomputer systems of the distributed computer system physically locatedin a second region different from the first region; and as a result ofthe determination, store the set of layers in the cache memory.
 19. Theone or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media of claim 18,wherein the determination to store the copied set of layers in cachememory is further based at least in part on one or more of: whether,depending at least in part on first historical data, an applicationcorresponding to the software image executes, on average, continuouslyfor a period that exceeds a time threshold; or whether, depending atleast in part on second historical data, the application is launched, onaverage, with a frequency that exceeds a frequency threshold.
 20. Theone or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media of claim 14,wherein: the executable instructions further include instructions thatcause the distributed computer system to: make available for purchasethrough an interface of an online marketplace, a license for downloadingthe software image; and depending at least in part on receiving aselection, through a device associated with the entity, for purchase ofthe license through the interface, execute the executable instructionsthat cause the distributed computer system to launch the copied set oflayers as the container.
 21. The one or more non-transitorycomputer-readable storage media of claim 20, wherein: the licensepermits usage of software corresponding to the set of layers for apredetermined duration; and the occurrence of the event is an expirationof the predetermined duration; and the executable instructions thatcause the distributed computer system to cause the container to beunavailable include instructions that cause the distributed computersystem to execute one or more of: instructions that cause thedistributed computer system to terminate the container; instructionsthat cause the distributed computer system to store a current state ofthe container; or instructions that cause the distributed computersystem to prevent the entity from accessing the container.